A Crisis of Privacy: Digital Abortion Surveillance in a Post-Roe United States

For her capstone project, Sarah Lee explored the growing intersection between digital privacy and U.S. reproductive rights in a post-Roe, data-driven world. Her research paper seeks to assess what legal factors and technological systems have enabled the formation of the existing abortion surveillance state, along with what duties are held by the federal government and tech companies to protect abortion-seekers' digital rights. In this paper, she lays out the prevailing impacts, risks and concerns surrounding abortion surveillance tactics in the digital era, as bred by the growing system of surveillance capitalism. She concludes with brief policy recommendations on the need for comprehensive data privacy legislation and greater data responsibility and transparency from tech companies.

Student project deposited by department for archival purposes. Original work unavailable for public download due to permission restriction preferences of the author.