Search histories, location data, text messages: How personal data could be used to enforce anti-abortion laws
CNN
A wave of new legislation taking aim at abortion rights across the country is raising concerns about the potential use of personal data to punish people who seek information about or access to abortion services online.
In some of the most restrictive states, digital rights experts warn that people's search histories, location data, messages and other digital information could be used by law enforcement agencies investigating or prosecuting abortion-related cases.
Concerns about the digital privacy implications of abortion restrictions come amid a movement by Republican-controlled states, including Georgia, Texas, Mississippi and Oklahoma, in recent years to pass laws severely curtailing access to the service. And they take on additional significance following the leak Monday of the Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, which guarantees a person's Constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy before viability (usually around 24 weeks). Overturning the landmark 1973 court ruling would transform the landscape of reproductive health in America, leaving abortion policy up to individual states and potentially paving the way for more than 20 states to pass new laws restricting abortions.