In May 1972, the Chicago Police Department attacked a high-rise condominium where a group called Jane Collective was providing an abortion. It was the year before the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade case. Wade’s decision gave women the constitutional right to decide whether to give birth, and abortion was a criminal offense in Illinois.
Seven women were arrested, including two who had the patient’s name and address on an index card in their wallet. According to history written by group member Jane’s Story, women smashed cards in police vans on their way to the station and broke them into small pieces to eat. They didn’t know what the police would do with the information, so they removed it.
Fifty years later, the Supreme Court overturned Roe’s decision. Abortion is banned or severely restricted in many countries. But now, thanks to the digital trails left in the modern tech era, it will be much more difficult to hide guilty data about the decision to end pregnancy.
When the draft court ruling was first leaked, and when the ruling became official last week, people focused on these digital trails, especially the information that millions of women share on the period tracker app about their menstrual cycle. I matched. The kneeling advice was simple and direct. Please delete all. straight away.
“Remove these fertility apps now” Tweet Gina Neff, a sociologist at the University of Cambridge and director of the Center for Technology Democracy at Minderu. In an interview with her Zoom, Dr. Neff said the app contains “powerful information about reproductive choices that are currently a threat.”
These apps allow users to record the dates of their menstrual cycle and get predictions about when they are ovulating and most likely to be born. The app can also be used as a digital diary of sexual activity, contraceptive methods and pregnancy attempts. Some women use the app when they are about to get pregnant, some women use it to avoid pregnancy, and some women only use it to know when their next period will come.
The recommendation to remove them seems to have had the opposite effect. According to Data.ai, which monitors app store activity, time-tracking app downloads have doubled in the days since Roe’s overthrow compared to the average weekly downloads in the last three months. became.
The biggest winners were clues and the lesser-known astronomical menstrual tracker Stardust. Both have pledged to protect their data after the Supreme Court’s ruling. A spokeswoman for Clue said the European-based company would not respond to requests for user health information from US law enforcement agencies.
Menstrual trackers appear to be a clear source of reproductive health decisions, but experts say other digital information is likely to put women at risk. Cynthia Conticook, a civil rights lawyer and technology fellow at the Ford Foundation, has been accused of endangering pesticides or fetuses by cataloging the digital evidence used against them in an academic paper published in 2020. We investigated the prosecution of pregnant people.
“”We need to start with the kind of data that is already being used to criminalize people, “said Conticook, who previously worked for a publicly-elected lawyer’s office in New York. “A text to your sister,’Abusive, I’m pregnant.’ Access to an abortion drug search history or a website with information about abortion.”
One of the cases that Conti-Cook emphasized was the case of a Mississippi woman, Latice Fisher, who was charged with a second murder after having a stillbirth at home in 2017. According to a local report, the investigator downloaded the contents of her phone. Her history of internet search, and she “accepted doing internet searches including ways to induce miscarriage” and how to buy pregnancy-ending drugs like mifepristone and misoprostol online. After attracting public attention, the proceedings against Mr. Fisher were withdrawn.
In another case, in Indiana, Purvi Patel was found guilty using a text message to a friend about taking an abortion drug late in pregnancy.
“These text messages, the websites we visit, and Google Search are the exact types of intentional evidence that prosecutors want to fill a bag of evidence,” said Conti-Cook.
Investigators may also use smartphone location data if the state passes a law prohibiting women from traveling to areas where abortion is legal. Information about people’s movements collected through mobile phone apps is regularly sold by data brokers.
When the New York Times investigated data that appeared to be anonymized in the market in 2018, it was able to identify a woman who spent an hour in Newark’s planned parent-child relationship. In May, Vice journalists were able to buy information from a data broker about a phone call to Planned Parenthoods during the week for just $ 160. (After Vice’s report, the data broker said it would stop selling data about visits to healthcare providers.)
In the past, anti-abortion activists have “geofenced” planned parent-child relationships, created digital boundaries around them, and owned websites aimed at discouraging women from ending their pregnancy. Targeted calls entering the area with advertising to guide people.
There are similar attempts to get the attention of people who go online to seek help with abortion. The Pregnancy Crisis Center aims to be the top search result for Google when people ask for information on how to end their pregnancy. When someone clicks on such a website, they may try to collect information about that person.
Given the many ways people move, communicate, and search the Internet digitally, the bigger question may be how enthusiastic law enforcement takes place in states where abortion is prohibited. .. These warnings about the use of menstrual trackers appear to be afraid of the worst. Search for people who are pregnant and no longer pregnant in the drugnet style.
“It’s hard to say when, where, how and what happens, but the possibilities are pretty dangerous,” Conticook said... “”It’s very easy to be overwhelmed by all the possibilities. That’s why I’m trying to emphasize focusing on what I’ve seen used against people. “
She added: “Google search, websites visited, email receipts. That’s what we saw.”