Wade 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 names and addresses of patients on index cards in their purses. According to a history written by a member of the collective, «The Story of Jane,» the women destroyed the cards in the police van on the way to the station, tearing them into small pieces and eating some of them. They didn’t know what the police might do with the information, so they got rid of it.

Fifty years later, the Supreme Court has overturned the Roe decision. When a draft of the court’s decision was first leaked in May, and then when the ruling became official last week, people focused on these digital trails, specifically the information that millions of women share about their menstrual cycles on period tracker apps. «Delete those fertility apps now,» tweeted Gina Neff, a sociologist and director of the Minderoo Center for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge. Neff said the apps contained «powerful information about reproductive choices that’s now a threat».

These apps allow users to record the dates of their menstrual cycles and get predictions about when they are ovulating and most fertile. The apps can also serve as digital diaries for sexual activity, birth control methods and conception attempts. Some women use the apps when they are trying to get pregnant, others to avoid it and many just to know when their next period is coming. The biggest gainers were Clue and a little-known astronomy-based period tracker, Stardust, both of which made public commitments to data protection after the Supreme Court’s decision.

A spokeswoman for Clue said the company, which is based in Europe, would not comply with requests for users’ health information from U. While period trackers seem like an obvious source of information about reproductive health decisions, experts say other digital information is more likely to put women at risk. «We should start with the types of data that have already been used to criminalize people,» said Ms. In another case, in Indiana, text messages to a friend about taking abortion pills late in a pregnancy were used to convict Purvi Patel, who successfully appealed and reduced a 20-year-sentence for feticide and neglect of a dependent. In May, a journalist at Vice was able to buy information from a data broker about phones that had been carried to Planned Parenthoods over the course of a week for just $160.

In the past, anti-abortion activists have «geofenced» Planned Parenthoods, creating a digital border around them and targeting phones that enter the area with ads directing owners to a website meant to dissuade women from ending their pregnancies. When someone clicks through to such a website, it will sometimes try to collect information about the person. Given the many ways in which people’s movements, communications and internet searches are digitally tracked, the bigger question may be just how zealous law enforcement will be in states with abortion bans.

original source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/30/technology/period-tracker-privacy-abortion.html

picture: unsplash.com