When abortion is criminalized, pregnancy is policed.
Earlier this week, we issued an urgent brief in partnership with The Alliance warning about a new legislative scheme state lawmakers and anti-abortion activists designed to enable crisis pregnancy centers and related actors surveil and track pregnant people. These bills would force pregnant people seeking an abortion to talk to anti-abortion “care agents” and get assigned a “unique identifying number” to be tracked in state-run databases.
One such bill already passed in Arkansas, and similar legislation is now advancing in at least four other states. In South Dakota, the governor recently filed litigation attempting to revive a decade-old bill that also sought to force pregnant people to consult with crisis pregnancy centers.
These efforts are the dystopian new frontier of radical anti-abortion agenda, but also align with the anti-abortion movement’s long history of trying to investigate personal information about people seeking reproductive healthcare and providers.
If you didn’t know: Digital trails are already being used to support pregnancy-related prosecutions.
Women’s Health Caucus Responds to Report With New Legislation
Rep. Mary Jo Daley, co-chair of the Women’s Health Caucus of the Pennsylvania Legislature, announced that she will be introducing legislation to protect the privacy of Pennsylvanians from anti-abortion activists.
From the memo:
While health care providers in the U.S. are subject to information disclosure provisions under HIPAA, crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), which typically do not provide any health care services, are not required to provide any similar privacy protections.
A recent investigation shows that umbrella organizations use CPCs to collect and store extensive personal client data to essentially create “digital dossiers” to surveille and attempt to influence every person who interacts with a CPC. This information includes everything from demographic data to sexual and medical histories to ultrasound photos.
On its own this is a dangerous invasion of privacy but considering recent movement to deputize private citizens into vigilantes to regulate reproductive health, the threat is becoming even more imminent.
Learn More about the Crisis Pregnancy Center Industry
Read our urgent new brief, The CPC Industry as a Surveillance Tool of the Post-Roe State and our ongoing CPC accountability work here.
Our CPC accountability work was recently covered in this in-depth excellent article.
Learn more about the crisis pregnancy industry in Pennsylvania by downloading our fact sheet here.
Women’s Law Project is a public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing and defending the rights of women, girls, and LGBTQ+ people in Pennsylvania and beyond. As a non-profit organization, we can not do this work without you. Please consider supporting our work.
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