Digital Privacy for Reproductive Choice in the Post-Roe Era

92 Pages Posted: 8 Sep 2022 Last revised: 10 Jul 2023

See all articles by Aziz Z. Huq

Aziz Z. Huq

University of Chicago - Law School

Rebecca Wexler

University of California, Berkeley, School of Law

Date Written: August 16, 2022

Abstract

The overruling of Roe v. Wade unleashed a torrent of regulatory and punitive activity restricting lawful reproductive options. The turn to the expansive criminal law and new schemes of civil liability creates new, and quite different, concerns from the pre-Roe landscape a half-century, ago. Reproductive choice, and its nemesis, rests on information. For pregnant people, deciding on a choice of medical care entails a search for advice and services. Information is at a premium for them. Meanwhile, efforts to regulate abortion begin with clinic closings, but quickly will extend to civil actions and criminal indictments of patients, providers, and those who facilitate abortions. Like the pregnant themselves, criminal and civil enforcers depend on information. And in the contemporary context, the informational landscape, and hence access to counseling and services such as medication abortion, is largely digital. In an era when most people use search engines or social media to access information, the digital architecture and data retention policies of those platforms will determine not only whether the pregnant can access medically accurate advice but also whether the mere act of doing so places them in legal peril.

This Article offers the first comprehensive accounting of abortion-related digital privacy after the end of Roe. It demonstrates first that digital privacy for pregnant persons in the United States has suddenly become a tremendously fraught and complex question. It then maps the treacherous social, legal and economic terrain upon which firms, individuals, and states will make privacy related decisions. Building on this political economy, we develop a moral and economic argument to the effect that digital firms should maximize digital privacy for pregnant persons within the scope of the law, and should actively resist restrictionist states’ efforts to instrumentalize them into their war on reproductive choice. We then lay out precise, tangible steps that firms should take to enact this active resistance, explaining in particular a range of powerful yet legal options for firms to refuse cooperation with restrictionist criminal and civil investigations. Finally, we present an original, concrete and immediately actionable proposal for federal and state legislative intervention: a statutory evidentiary privilege to shield abortion-relevant data from restrictionist warrants, subpoenas, court orders, and judicial proceedings.

Keywords: Abortion, data privacy

Suggested Citation

Huq, Aziz Z. and Wexler, Rebecca, Digital Privacy for Reproductive Choice in the Post-Roe Era (August 16, 2022). New York University Law Review, Vol. 97, U of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 812, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4191990 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4191990

Aziz Z. Huq (Contact Author)

University of Chicago - Law School ( email )

1111 E. 60th St.
Chicago, IL 60637
United States

Rebecca Wexler

University of California, Berkeley, School of Law ( email )

691 Simon Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
United States
510 664 5258 (Phone)

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