How your digital footprint interacts with the overturning of Roe v. Wade
The overturning of Roe v Wade led to eight states immediately implementing total or near total abortion bans and four more states have followed in the months after. Many have since voiced serious concerns about how one’s digital footprint could lead to a criminal conviction when deciding to get an abortion despite the new laws in some states.
But how can a digital footprint endanger people with unwanted pregnancies? Pregnant people wishing for abortion most often leave digital traces online that could point to a potential abortion or wish for abortion. For example, when a person is searching for abortion clinics nearby or informing themselves about different forms of abortion. In states that have criminalized abortions, these digital footprints can be used by law enforcement agencies and even be used as criminal evidence as proven by the case of Latice Fisher (Lang, 2022). In 2017, Fisher was under suspicion of allegedly having killed her newborn baby right after giving birth, while she and her husband report the baby was suddenly stillborn in their home. In order to build a motive, investigators searched Fisher’s internet history and found that she had googled “Misoprostol”, an abortion pill. This led to Fisher to being indicted on a charge of second-degree murder, which if convicted, leads to an up to 40-year prison sentence (Rankin, 2020). While in Fisher’s case it may have been the right thing to check if her story was true, it shows that your digital footprint can be used to prove criminal intent or activity (by seeking an abortion) if you are unfortunate to live in a state denying you agency of your own body.
The worry of having your digital footprint be held against one in a criminal investigation when seeking abortions has led many people to delete period-tracking apps and also makes you think about how data monetization and trading can be problematic. Recent research shows that it is very easy for anti-abortion supporters to buy sensible location data about who visited an abortion clinic. While the data trading companies say that the data is anonymous, experts say it is still possible to reverse the anonymity if there is only few data about one specific abortion clinic (Lang, 2022).
So while there is not yet complete surveillance about people’s reproduction in the affected U.S. states, it sure could turn into a dystopian reality that is actually not that far away right now.
References
Lang, R. (2022, May 9). US-Abtreibungsrecht: Gefährliche Datenspuren von Schwangerschaftsabbrüchen. Netzpolitik.org. https://netzpolitik.org/2022/us-abtreibungsrecht-gefaehrliche-datenspuren-von-schwangerschaftsabbruechen/
Rankin, L. (2020, February 26). How an online search for abortion pills landed this woman in jail. Fast Company. https://www.fastcompany.com/90468030/how-an-online-search-for-abortion-pills-landed-this-woman-in-jail
