Abortion Message Alive and Well with Verizon

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Pro-choice followers work so hard to get their message out that they were ready to sue Verizon for denying a request from a pro-choice organization to use its network for text messages. Verizon quickly changed their policy and let the group use the network after select public outcry.

Verizon rejected a request from NARAL Pro-Choice America, which supports abortion rights, to set up an SMS alert system to which customers could opt in via short code. Various entities, from businesses to charities to political groups, can apply for short codes through a CTIA short code program and then wireless providers are given a list, which they typically approve.

However, Verizon Wireless initially rejected the request from NARAL, based on an internal policy on not allowing short codes for messages touching on controversial social issues. NARAL took the rejection public, telling The New York Times that Verizon Wireless’ policy interfered with political activism.

Verizon Wireless executives reviewed the situation and “determined it was an incorrect interpretation of a dusty internal policy,” according to carrier spokesman Jeffrey Nelson. The policy was developed prior to adequate spam filters and “was designed to ward against communications such as anonymous hate messaging and adult materials sent to children.”

According to Verizon Wireless, the short code is now operational, and NARAL has been notified of its availability. Verizon stated, “Our internal policy had not been updated over the last while, to reflect our reality and our customers’ reality, and how text messaging is being used.”

The controversy also raised issues of net neutrality, or the extent to which wireline and wireless operators should be able to control or prioritize the content their users can access. CTIA has notified Congress of its opposition to the imposition of “any rules which would impose nondiscriminatory net neutrality requirements on network operators” and said that such rules “would be especially problematic if applied in the wireless context,” according to a letter to the House committee on energy and commerce.