Your phone could reveal if you’ve had an abortion
Internet searches, visits to clinics and period-tracking apps leave digital trails.

By Geoffrey A. Fowler and Tatum Hunter
May 4 2022

When someone gets an abortion, they may decide not to share information with friends and family members. But chances are their smartphone knows.

The leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion proposing to overturn Roe v. Waderaises a data privacy flash point: If abortion becomes criminal in some states, might a person’s data trail be treated as evidence?

There is precedent for it, and privacy advocates say data collection could become a major liability for people seeking abortions in secret. Phones can record communications, search histories, body health data and other information. Just Tuesday, there was new evidence that commercial data brokers sell location information gathered from the phones of people who visit abortion clinics.

“It is absolutely something to be concerned about — and something to learn about, hopefully before being in a crisis mode, where learning on the fly might be more difficult,” said Cynthia Conti-Cook, a technology fellow at the Ford Foundation.

It is now common for law enforcement to make use of the contents of people’s phones, including location and browsing information. One case against an alleged Jan. 6 insurrectionist drew upon thousands of pages of data from the suspect’s phone as well as Facebook records, prosecutors said.


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