Via MSN Com:
The Department of Health and Human Services quietly removed lesbian and bisexual content from its women’s health website last fall, according to a new report from the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit government watchdog group.
he findings, released on Wednesday, noted that the HHS-operated Office of Women’s Health (OWH) “removed a webpage with extensive information about lesbian and bisexual health, and links that correspond to that webpage.” The removal, according to the report, happened between September and October 2017.
The removed “Lesbian and bisexual health” page, which had last been updated in 2012, contained answers to LGBTQ-specific health questions, including “What factors put lesbians’ and bisexual women’s health at risk?” and “What challenges do lesbian and bisexual women face in the health care system?” What was once the URL for this page now leads to a “page not found” error. A hyperlink that had previously led to the “Lesbian and bisexual health” page from the OWH’s “A-Z Health Topics” page has also been removed.
The OWH website, womenshealth.gov, provides a wide variety of resources for women, from information on asthma to tips on healthy eating. Since May 2017, OWH has altered or removed several links and webpages from the website, which has been visited approximately 700,000 times over the past 30 days. The removal of other content will be the subject of subsequent reports, according to the Sunlight Foundation.
In a statement, an HHS spokesperson said the LGBTQ health content was removed in an effort to “provide the most accurate health information” on the site.
“As OWH updates its site, the outdated lesbian and bisexual health pages were removed and the health content was integrated into the relevant health topics pages across the website,” the spokesperson said. “This aligns with how people search for content. You can now find lesbian and bisexual health content by searching for relevant health topics on the womenshealth.gov website.”
The chlamydia page, for example, includes “Can women who have sex with women get chlamydia?” among its contents.
HT: Rufus