Press Policy

Digital Defense Fund was established in 2017 in response to the increased need for security and technology resources in the abortion rights movement after the 2016 election. We focus on providing services to organizations that work to advance abortion access. Due to the sensitive nature of our work, we do not typically take interviews.

However, we’re deeply grateful to you for covering the critical intersection between digital rights, privacy rights, and abortion rights. We’ll do our best to address some of the frequently asked questions we receive below. This page has been updated as of 8/12/22.

We also encourage you to refer to the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s guide, Taking care with source security when reporting on abortion.

Frequently Asked Questions:

What digital security advice do you have for abortion seekers, providers, and activists?

Digital Defense Fund has put together a guide to abortion and pregnancy privacy that contains advice applicable to different threat areas facing abortion-seekers. We like to remind those covering this issue that people may have different concerns based on their needs, identities, and experiences of what “safety” means for them. 

For example, an abortion-seeker who is dealing with domestic violence issues within the home may have some of the same needs and benefit from the same practices as someone who is at risk for abortion criminalization, but not always. We always like to ask “Secure for what purpose?” and “Secure from who?” when working to find appropriate recommendations. We appreciate your help covering this nuance in writing about these often confusing topics.

Research by If/When/How finds that the greatest risk for people criminalized for self-managed abortion is other people. Their report on self-managed abortion criminalization from 2000 to 2020 identified 61 cases across 26 states. Criminalized people were reported to law enforcement by healthcare providers (45%), acquaintances (26%), or others who knew about the pregnancy loss. Only after the cases came to the attention of law enforcement did police seek subpoenas or warrants for digital evidence. Discussions of security for abortion seekers must include operational security, not just digital security.

We also encourage you to connect the ways that digital evidence could be used to criminalize people seeking abortion to the larger issues of abortion criminalization and data criminalization. Individual digital security practices can only go so far to protect us from an ever-growing carceral state.

Who can take press interviews on digital security for abortion seekers?

Our colleagues at If/When/How are the legal experts on abortion criminalization and how it overlaps with existing challenges in digital civil rights. They can be reached at their media inquiry page. We highly recommend reading their report, “Self-Care, Criminalized: August 2022 Preliminary Findings”.

Our colleagues at Electronic Frontier Foundation can answer in-depth questions about digital civil liberties and technology, and can be reached at press@eff.org.

What are the major digital security threats facing abortion seekers?

At Digital Defense Fund, we work to ensure that we’re centering the needs raised by those who work directly with abortion-seekers. Our assumptions around the major digital security threats come from the extensive research and direct support experiences in addressing those circumstances where abortion has already been criminalized, as well as how data has been used to criminalize other intersecting groups, including immigrants and sex workers.

Some of these major threats include, but are not limited to:

1. Existing prosecutorial overreach and unreasonable search and seizure used to collect evidence in cases criminalizing someone for an abortion: 

   • Surveilling the Abortion Diary by Cynthia Conti-Cook details how digital evidence has been used to criminalize people for pregnancy loss in the past, and how it may be used in the post-Roe future. 

   • Mass Extraction by Upturn investigates “the widespread power of US law enforcement to search mobile phones”. Often obtained with “consent”, phones contain evidence including search history, text messages, and emails. 

2. Disinformation and infringement on internet freedom for abortion seekers and providers making it harder for abortion seekers to find accurate information about their abortion care options:

   1. Poor search integrity for abortion referral diverting patients from care: 

      • 2014: Rewire reports that Google is first contacted by NARAL Pro-Choice American about deceptive abortion ads placed by anti-abortion advocacy groups.

      • 2017: Rewire reports on another round of deceptive ad removals by Google. 

      • 2018: Researchers publish “Quality of Information Available Online for Abortion Self-Referral”, and find that 12.9% of webpage results, 21.7% of map results, and 29.9% of advertisements hindered abortion referral when people searched for abortion information online.

      • 2019: As reported by the Guardian, Google announces a policy change to abortion-related ads, requiring the purchaser of the ad to disclose if they provide abortions or do not provide abortions. The Guardian later reports that this policy is not working and that deceptive anti-abortion ads are still targeting people seeking abortions. 

      • 2021: Facebook and Google were called out in a report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate for accepting paid ads for a dangerous untested medical treatment that claims to reverse an abortion. ​​There is no medical evidence for the treatment, and one study to investigate the safety and efficacy of the claims was cancelled after multiple participants had serious complications.

      • 2022: The Center for Countering Digital Hate finds that at least 1 in 10 searches for abortion clinics are still resulting in deceptive anti-abortion results. In trigger ban states, 37% of map searches lead to misleading results.Censoring of accurate information off of platforms

   2. Censoring of accurate information off of platforms

      • Factual information about self-managed abortion is often removed by social media platforms. Examples include Women on Web’s Facebook account suspension; Safe2Choose’s YouTube account; Campaign for Safe Abortion Rights; and TikTok. Trolls often submit false reports about abortion access information or sex ed information. The same tactics are often used against sex workers and content creators, as reported by Hacking//Hustling. 

      • Reproaction recently hosted a webinar with Women on Web, Indigenous Women Rising, and Women First Digital calling out tech platforms for removing accurate abortion information and calling for accountability.

      • Electronic Frontier Foundation reported on the removal of abortion information from social media platforms and offered advice for platforms on how they can improve.

3. Data privacy violations by anti-abortion organizations: 

   • Privacy International has published reports on privacy violations by anti-abortion CPCs and data exploitation by anti-abortion organizations. They also released a statement analyzing the Dobbs decision from an international privacy perspective.

It’s important to note that the majority of people who have been criminalized for pregnancy loss or for ending a pregnancy on their own were incriminated by healthcare professionals or other people who knew about the pregnancy loss. Digital security tactics might have helped them limit the evidence that could be used against them, or provided them time and ability to work with counsel to improve any legal options. But ultimately surveillance by people, rather than technology, was the primary contributing factor in these cases. 

To learn more about previous cases of pregnancy criminalization, please refer to If/When/How’s Self-Care, Criminalized: August 2022 Preliminary Findings, and to the National Association for Pregnant Women, which has been advocating for the freedoms and rights of pregnant people since 2001. Learn more with NAPW’s Guide to Confronting Pregnancy Criminalization. To contact NAPW, refer to their press page. 

For a beautifully thorough reading list on the criminalization of pregnancy loss and abortion, please see The Color of Surveillance: Policing of Abortion and Reproduction Reading List by the Center on Privacy and Technology.

Doesn’t HIPAA protect abortion-seekers?

HIPAA is a law that regulates healthcare providers and insurance companies. Privacy and security guidance is only a small part of the law. HIPAA does not protect healthcare records from legal requests. We recommend reading the Consumer Reports article Guess What? HIPAA Isn't a Medical Privacy Law and the JAMA article HIPAA, Privacy, and Reproductive Rights in a Post-Roe Era to learn more. 

What’s all this about period tracking apps and ad data?

The fact that period tracking apps collect large amounts of intimate data has been reported by Privacy International back in 2018 and by Coding Rights, with a focus on how that data is monetized with targeted ads. However, the data used for creepy targeted advertising is not necessarily the data used as digital evidence in criminal courts.

We recommend this incredible piece by Emma Weil, Maggie Delano, and Kendra Albert that explains, “Period trackers are not the primary form of digital evidence likely to be used in abortion prosecutions today. If tracking your period is useful to you, you don’t need to stop tracking your period, although you may choose to switch to an app that collects less data and stores it locally.”

We believe all people deserve access to private, high quality, accessible technology for such common needs as cycle tracking. But whether any app is “secure” or “safe” has a lot of considerations. For those who are interested in a privacy-protecting period tracking app, Consumer Reports covered these considerations as they apply to a variety of period tracking apps in their piece on Period Tracker Apps and Privacy. Tactical Tech also published an assessment of the privacy policies of cycle tracking apps and their recommendations.

We highly recommend that anyone seeking to cover period tracking as a component of risk also address the established risks of surveillance policing and mobile extraction covered above and outlined in Kendra, Maggie, and Emma’s article.

What can tech companies do to help protect people seeking abortions? 

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a list of actions that tech companies can take.

We also recommend User Error: the Internet Post-Roe by the Kairos Fellowship for a deeper dive into how major tech companies can protect people seeking abortions. The report highlights the major threats we enumerated above: disinformation, data privacy, and law enforcement, and provides recommendations for tech platforms to keep their users safer.