Miles Apart: Texas and California Lawmakers Stake Opposite Corners of Abortion Policy

It’s about 1,500 miles from Austin to Sacramento, but Texas and California lawmakers are a million miles apart on how to treat private data related to reproductive health.

5/5/2023
by JENNIFER PINSOF and HAYLEY TSUKAYAMA

State lawmakers in Texas and California are staking out opposite corners of digital public policy in the post-Roe era: in Texas by trying to ban online speech about abortion, and in California by trying to protect those seeking abortions from dragnet-style digital surveillance.

How these states legislate reproductive data privacy and information access could affect millions of vulnerable people nationwide, because the internet doesn’t stop at state borders.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2023/05/05/texas-california-abortion-privacy/

06.05.2023

Commentary

Assembly Bill 793

digital surveillance and abortion

digital technology and abortion

USA – Human Rights Watch Letter Concerning the Use of Federal Aid in Abortion Surveillance

Letter Concerning the Use of Federal Aid in Abortion Surveillance

Human Rights Watch
December 8, 2022

Dear President Biden, We the undersigned civil and human rights, civil liberties, and reproductive health, rights, and justice organizations write to express our concern that existing forms of federal assistance to state and local law enforcement will be used to support state and local surveillance and investigations of reproductive health activities. We urge you to take steps to prevent this.

Your Administration has expressed its strong commitment to protecting access to reproductive health care, including abortion, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. The White House has declared that it is “committed to doing everything in his power to defend reproductive rights and protect access to safe and legal abortion.”[1] As part of its effort to defend access to abortion and other reproductive health care, federal resources should in no way aid or supplement states' criminal investigations of reproductive health decisions. Several states have already taken action to prevent their own state resources from being used in such a matter.[2]

Continued: https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/12/08/letter-concerning-use-federal-aid-abortion-surveillance

08.12.2022

Featured

digital surveillance and abortion

digital technology and abortion

Human Rights Watch

Joe Biden

prosecuting women for abortion

surveilling abortion providers

surveilling abortion seekers

Nebraska – Facebook gave police their private data. Now, this duo face abortion charges

Experts say it underscores the importance of encryption and minimizing the amount of user data tech companies can store
Johana Bhuiyan
Wed 10 Aug 2022

In the wake of the supreme court’s upheaval of Roe v Wade, tech workers and privacy advocates expressed concerns about how the user data tech companies stored could be used against people seeking abortions.

When a Facebook staffer posed the dilemma to the chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, asking how the platform would protect the user data of individuals seeking abortion care, Zuckerberg said the company’s ongoing push to encrypt messaging would help protect people from “bad behavior or over-broad requests for information”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/10/facebook-user-data-abortion-nebraska-police

USA – Looming abortion law changes are pushing clinics to take a look at digital privacy

Some clinic employees say they are embracing encrypted messaging apps and Zoom meetings to leave less of an electronic paper trail.

June 8, 2022
By Kevin Collier

With the Supreme Court poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that enshrined the constitutional right to abortion nearly 50 years ago, some abortion providers are rushing to take precautions to guard their communications and their patients’ data, fearing that the information could be used in future prosecutions.

Others are already a step ahead of them. Mia Raven, the director of policy at the West Alabama Women’s Center, said her clinic runs almost exclusively on paper. It’s a strategy she said is meant to ensure patient privacy.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/abortion-clinics-providers-digital-privacy-roe-overturn-rcna30654

USA – Your phone and digital data could reveal if you’ve had an abortion

June 5, 2022
6-Minute Listen, with transcript

Ayesha Rascoe speaks with Dina Temple-Raston, host of the "Click Here" podcast and senior correspondent at The Record, about how threats to digital privacy could affect abortion access.

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
If Roe v. Wade is overturned, people seeking abortions will face a different world than those who sought them in previous decades, one in which their digital data could potentially be used as evidence against them.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2022/06/05/1103145019/your-phone-and-digital-data-could-reveal-if-youve-had-an-abortion

05.06.2022

digital surveillance and abortion

digital technology and abortion

USA – Anti-abortion movement’s big plan: Supercharged “crisis pregnancy centers” and data harvesting

Anti-choice activists roll out bold new strategy to register and track abortion-seekers. Why do they want to know?

By KATHRYN JOYCE
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 12, 2022

Oklahoma state Sen. George Burns, a Republican, introduced a new bill this month that would require anyone seeking an abortion in the state to call a designated hotline to receive counseling from "care agents" about abortion alternatives, and also to be screened for the possibility that they are victims of abuse, human trafficking or abortion coercion. The bill, SB 1167 or the "Every Mother Matters Act" (EMMA), is couched as an offer of resources, from housing to employment assistance, to provide "compassionate options for those faced with unexpected pregnancies," as Burns said in a press release. He acknowledges, however, that his "ultimate goal is ending abortion altogether."

So far, generally so familiar. But there's an important new twist here that looks to be the tip of a national iceberg: The Oklahoma bill also provides for the state Department of Health to assign each abortion-seeker who calls the hotline a "unique identifying number." Abortion providers would be required to obtain and record that number, which would also be registered in a DHS database.

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2022/02/12/anti-abortion-movements-big-plan-supercharged-crisis-pregnancy-centers-and-data-harvesting/

12.02.2022

Commentary

Featured

American Center for Law and Justice

Angela Paxton

anti-choice deception

anti-choice invasion of privacy

anti-choice lies

anti-choice misinformation

anti-choice misogyny

Chelsey Youman

crisis pregnancy centers

Cynthia Conti-Cook

digital technology and abortion

Heartbeat International

HIPAA restrictions

Human Coalition

Human Coalition Action

National Advocates for Pregnant Women

National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers

pregnancy care centers

Privacy International

Part 1: how anti-abortion activism is exploiting data

Part 1: how anti-abortion activism is exploiting data

Monday, July 22, 2019

Intrusive data collection software and digital marketing systems are being developed and promulgated around the world by powerful and politically connected US-based anti-abortion organisations.

As anti-abortion organisations wake up to the utility of personal data to tailor and target messages online, data-intensive technologies and tools are being specifically developed for crisis pregnancy centres – which reportedly sometimes masquerade as licensed medical facilities and which have been criticised for providing those seeking medical help with false and misleading information.

Continued: https://www.privacyinternational.org/long-read/3096/part-1-how-anti-abortion-activism-exploiting-data

Latin Organizations unite creativity and innovation for health and reproductive rights in Latin America

Latin Organizations unite creativity and innovation for health and reproductive rights in Latin America

12th December, 2017

The digital gadgets such as social networks, applications and more have helped bring people to all kinds of information and helped communicate in various ways no matter the distance. However, bringing Women in Latin America closer to these technologies by talking about safe abortion and reproductive rights has been a challenge.

For this reason, safe2choose took part of the IDEA initiative, the first forum on Innovation for Reproductive Rights in Latin America. On November 2017, we embarked to Quito, Ecuador, where we met creative and innovative teams from all over the region. What united us was the use of the latest, most advanced technological gadgets for sexual and reproductive health.

Continued at source: https://safe2choose.org/innovation-reproductive-rights/

12.12.2017