Dobbs and Our Privacies

Abstract This chapter discusses the relationship between reproductive autonomy and data privacies. It documents first the scope of anti-abortion criminal and civil investigations after Dobbs and explains why these investigations will seek to exploit digital personal information, creating new risks to the pregnant and their care providers as well as broad spillover harms to data privacy more generally. It then describes the expansive production of digital personal data in the information economy and explains how such data can put reproductive autonomy at risk. The role of, and risks from, digital data in the coming abortion wars will ultimately be determined by two groups of actors: private tech firms and state actors who will set the rules for anti-abortion investigators’ access to the data. The chapter concludes with a detailed prescriptive account of what tech firms and state actors should do to protect digital privacy after Dobbs.