A Nebraska case involving a mother who illegally gave her daughter an abortion pill has put renewed attention on the role digital information and communication could play in prosecutions around abortion.
next year, the claim relies on text messages the man allegedly found on his ex-wife’s phone. The women being sued have filed a countersuit.
Prosecutions are still rare in part because abortion opponents are nervous about political backlash from targeting pregnant people as opposed to medical providers, said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis who studies the anti-abortion movement. For decades, the movement has focused on prosecuting providers instead, in an effort to frame restrictions on the procedure as an effort to protect pregnant people.
But efforts to go after individual patients or their personal support networks could become more common in time, especially as anti-abortion groups grow more frustrated by people finding ways to circumvent state bans, such as ordering medications online from services such as the European organization Aid Access, or traveling out of state to receive abortions.
If that happens, Ziegler said, internet user data could become a meaningful law enforcement tool. But the sheer amount of online information that exists means officials are more likely to seek records if they have a specific reason, such as a suggestion from another party that the person involved may have somehow sought an abortion.
“It’s not hard for law enforcement to know who to monitor and where to look,” she said. “But if you’re law enforcement and are being tasked to survey your entire state of reproductive age to see if they’re ordering something on the internet or leaving the state, that’s a Herculean task. Even with reams of consumer data, you need a tip.”
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