Database programmers at famed Johns Hopkins University have admitted they were instructed to leave the word "abortion" out of searches in a public database on reproductive health. The admission came after several federal officials raised questions about the database.

Corrections were made to the database, known as Popline, after the dean of the Public Health School was made aware of the error. Popline is the largest database of its kind in the world, offering more than 360,000 articles on reproductive health, including information on sexually transmitted diseases.

A spokesman for the school said developers had raised concerns about the programming when results were returned advocating abortion. Both the dean of the school, Dr. Michael J. Klag, and a spokesman for the Naral Pro-Choice America, Ted Miller, agree the error should be corrected and that the reasons behind it occurring will be detected and made public.

Leave it to the librarians to raise a fuss. After not being able to search Popline for the word "abortion," librarians at the Medical Center of the University of California, expressed concern. They commented on their experience on an electronic list serve and were told that "abortion" was no longer a valid search term. They were also advised to use other words to get the information they wanted, such as "pregnancy, unwanted."

This riled Gail L. Sorrough, director of medical library services at the school in San Francisco, who stated, "Eliminating this term essentially blocks access to reports in the database and ultimately to information about abortion. Unwanted pregnancy is not a synonym for abortion."

By eliminating this word, access is essentially being blocked to important information critical in decision making when it comes to reproductive choices.