DEFEND ABORTION!

Big Tech surveillance and censorship are fueling the attacks on abortion access. Tell companies like Google, Slack, Discord & Meta to protect our privacy, stop harvesting our data, and take a stand for body freedom.

TAKE ACTION

Companies

Tech companies must stop collecting, retaining, and sharing data unnecessarily; platforms and apps should only collect and share data that is required for their specific purpose. Platforms must also immediately stop censoring and repressing accurate abortion information shared by abortion providers, abortion funds, and reproductive justice advocates.

Lawmakers

Lawmakers must fight legislation that endangers seekers, facilitators, and providers of abortions and gender affirming care, including so-called “abortion travel bans.” Instead, lawmakers should pass bills that protect access to all forms of abortion care AND data privacy legislation that protects us against corporate data harvesting.

Federal Agencies

Agencies like the FTC must protect abortion seekers, facilitators and providers, as well as those seeking and providing gender affirming care, by challenging companies’ unnecessary and excessive collection of data, and the selling and sharing of data.

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WHAT’S HAPPENING?

On top of the 20+ laws that ban or severely restrict abortion access across the country, a handful of lawmakers in Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Idaho are now taking the assault on reproductive rights a step further. They want to criminalize any person or group––like an abortion fund––that helps someone cross state lines for an abortion. While abortion pills are available by mail in all 50 states, some abortion seekers need in-person care. Proposed “abortion travel bans” are designed to terrify people out of traveling to access that care. In a few counties along Texas’ border, anti-abortion travel restrictions have successfully passed into law, and others may soon follow.

Post-Roe, we have already seen how technology can be weaponized to censor information about abortion access and to criminalize abortion seekers. Now that efforts to restrict abortion travel are accelerating, it’s more important than ever that lawmakers take action to enshrine the right to abortion into law, and for tech companies to do everything in their power to limit the collection of unnecessary data, protect user privacy, and end the censorship of life saving abortion information. If they don’t, we’ll only see more incidents of Big Tech data serving as key evidence in anti-abortion lawsuits against abortion facilitators, providers, or seekers.

HOW IS BIG TECH ENDANGERING ABORTION SEEKERS, FACILITATORS & PROVIDERS?

Tech companies collect massive amounts of data on us every day, tracking who we talk to, where we go, and what we search for. This can reveal when, where, and how someone gets an abortion—whether at home or out of state—and can be used to criminalize abortion seekers and anyone who supports them. Some key examples of data that could be used against people and organizations:

Direct messages: Messages that are not end-to-end encrypted on platforms like Instagram, Slack and Discord endanger abortion seekers and facilitators because they can easily be accessed by the companies and handed over to law enforcement. This is especially concerning for abortion fund organizations that often conduct all of their internal communications on unencrypted platforms like Slack.
Location data and search data: Google search and maps, as well as travel website searches, can be requested or even bought by law enforcement to determine whether someone has searched for and visited abortion clinics.
Money transfers and credit card purchases: Venmo and PayPal transactions as well as records of bus ticket purchases, Uber rides, accommodation booking, and abortion care itself can be used to incriminate abortion seekers, their loved ones, and/or reproductive rights organizations providing people with funding needed to travel out of state.

Big Tech’s data harvesting, which helps fuel advertising and exorbitant company profits, is not only invasive and manipulative––it could also land someone in prison, simply for exercising their right to bodily autonomy.

The good news is that our grassroots pressure has already forced companies to take steps to limit data collection and improve privacy features, from protecting messages with default end-to-end encryption to reducing the invasive tracking of users’ locations. If enough people continue to demand these changes, we know we’ll keep winning life-saving improvements in platform features and service.

MORE ACTIONS

Make DMs Safe

Post-Roe, there’s one simple thing every messaging platform must do: make our messages safe using end-to-end encryption.

TAKE ACTION

Make Slack Safe

Slack is endangering users, especially targeted groups like abortion funds & human rights activists, by failing to offer end-to-end encrypted messaging.

TAKE ACTION