In 2017, Latice Fisher’s baby, lifeless and blue in the toilet with an umbilical cord attached, would never hear the screaming of sirens as paramedics arrived. They swept it away, rushing the baby to the hospital.
There, it was pronounced dead.
Fisher had told the paramedics that she was not pregnant, but later admitted to knowing about the pregnancy. After having her iPhone search history combed by the police, investigators discovered that she had searched for how to “buy Misopristol Abortion Pill Online” ten days earlier.
Her search history played a major role in helping prosecutors charge her with “killing her infant child.” This case was one of the handful which involved American prosecutors using search history to declare that women had aborted their children.
With Roe v Wade overturned by the Supreme Court on June 24, 2022, privacy experts have warned that these search histories have proven to be enormous risks for these women.
Laurie Bertham Roberts, a spokeswoman for Fisher, stated, “Lots of people Google about abortion and then choose to carry out their pregnancies. Thought crimes are not the thing. You’re not supposed to be indicted on a charge of what you thought about.”
Additionally, there have been increasing concerns about information from period trackers, tech companies, and data brokers.
Emma Roth, a staff attorney at the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, adds, “The reality is, we do absolutely everything on our phones these days. There are many, many ways in which law enforcement can find out about somebody’s journey to seek an abortion through digital surveillance.”
For years, women have been criminalized for terminating pregnancy, and many of those cases have been built upon digital evidence. In one case, Purvi Patel, an Indiana woman, had visited a website that sold mifepristone pills and misoprostol pills from a website without a prescription. When she ended her own pregnancy, prosecutors used that evidence to sentence her to twenty years in jail.
In this post-Roe world, how much of our digital information will stay our own? The question is now more important than ever with the decision of Roe v Wade.
Link to Article: Democratic candidates seize on abortion while Republicans says quiet – The Washington Post.pdf
There, it was pronounced dead.
Fisher had told the paramedics that she was not pregnant, but later admitted to knowing about the pregnancy. After having her iPhone search history combed by the police, investigators discovered that she had searched for how to “buy Misopristol Abortion Pill Online” ten days earlier.
Her search history played a major role in helping prosecutors charge her with “killing her infant child.” This case was one of the handful which involved American prosecutors using search history to declare that women had aborted their children.
With Roe v Wade overturned by the Supreme Court on June 24, 2022, privacy experts have warned that these search histories have proven to be enormous risks for these women.
Laurie Bertham Roberts, a spokeswoman for Fisher, stated, “Lots of people Google about abortion and then choose to carry out their pregnancies. Thought crimes are not the thing. You’re not supposed to be indicted on a charge of what you thought about.”
Additionally, there have been increasing concerns about information from period trackers, tech companies, and data brokers.
Emma Roth, a staff attorney at the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, adds, “The reality is, we do absolutely everything on our phones these days. There are many, many ways in which law enforcement can find out about somebody’s journey to seek an abortion through digital surveillance.”
For years, women have been criminalized for terminating pregnancy, and many of those cases have been built upon digital evidence. In one case, Purvi Patel, an Indiana woman, had visited a website that sold mifepristone pills and misoprostol pills from a website without a prescription. When she ended her own pregnancy, prosecutors used that evidence to sentence her to twenty years in jail.
In this post-Roe world, how much of our digital information will stay our own? The question is now more important than ever with the decision of Roe v Wade.
Link to Article: Democratic candidates seize on abortion while Republicans says quiet – The Washington Post.pdf
