Need an Abortion? Don’t Ask Siri

So you need to be less pregnant than you are at the moment.

First thing’s first: find an abortion provider.

Back in my day, we used the Yellow Pages for that. It was a giant book with business listings, which could be balanced on the knees. It contained the addresses and phone numbers of florists, taxidermists, hairdressers, mechanics, schools and abortion clinics (unless you happened to live on Prince Edward Island).

Nowadays there’s an app for that. Siri, iPhone’s new magical thing, is supposed to be able to tell you where you are, where you want to be, the address of the small cobbler you went to one time in 1995, whether your ex-boyfriend kept the naughty photos you texted him, exactly how disappointed your mum is in you and where to find your local abortion provider.

According to a lot of our friends south of the border, the glorious app has difficulty finding that last item. US bloggers report the app failed to find any providers in Manhattan, and in Washington DC directed a user to a clinic 40 kilometres outside the city.

If Siri can find every hot dog stand in the city, the bra you lost in 2003 and a plumber who doesn’t leave muddy footprints on your nice kitchen floor, surely it should be able to locate an abortion provider!

And if not, why not? Some say it’s a conspiracy. The US pro-abortion blog The Abortioneers conducted an experiment, asking app users all over the country to simultaneously search for an abortion provider. In all cases they were given no information or a location a long distance away.

It seems something sinister is going on. What to do? For a start, sign The Abortioneer’s petition. If you’re good at writing strongly-worded emails, bother the company.

And most importantly, publish, publish, publish. Use your twitter account or blog to make a noise. You are the 99 percent.

Contact the author here: miriam@morningquickie.com