Tag: abortion
Police are using Facebook chat logs to prosecute abortion seekers
In the immediate aftermath of the reversal of Roe v. Wade, women worried data from their period-tracking apps could be used to prosecute them for having an abortion. Now, women and people with uteruses need to consider what they write in chat logs, direct messages and search bars online.
A report from Insider notes that ProPublica found that at least nine online pharmacies that sell abortion medication — Abortion Ease, BestAbortionPill.com, PrivacyPillRX, PillsOnlineRX, Secure Abortion Pills, AbortionRx, Generic Abortion Pills, Abortion Privacy, and Online Abortion Pill Rx — were sharing information like users’ web addresses, relative location, and search data with third-party sites like Google. That kind of exchange opens that data up to discovery as part of law enforcement requests.
But requests from law enforcement are nothing new.
Insider points to the case of Jessica Burgess, who is accused of helping her daughter perform an illegal abortion in their home state of Nebraska. A key piece of evidence in the case against Burgess was chat logs provided to law enforcement by Meta that discuss finding abortion medication on Facebook. The request for evidence was made before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Social media companies are often legally required to comply with law enforcement requests for user data. Unlike public user content, which can be viewed by anyone and used in a court of law, private user content like location, search, or messaging history must be obtained via warrant. As of June 2022, Meta said it receives more than 200,000 requests for information and complies about 76% of the time.
In 2022, Google announced that it would auto-delete the location history of users who visited abortion clinics. Google said it would “oppose demands that are overly broad or otherwise legally objectionable” when it comes to using data as evidence, but as Mashable’s Alex Perry notes, that statement leaves plenty of wiggle room.
But Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, told Insider that social media is simply a “pawn” in law enforcement’s larger game of prosecuting women for having abortions.
So what can you do to minimize your risk? Know that most of what you say online can be used against you when it comes to abortion prosecution in states where abortion is illegal. Talk to people you trust in person instead of over the phone, by text, or on social media. In the meantime, here’s how to donate to abortion funds and reproductive justice networks across the country.
Proposed Texas bill seeks to ban abortion websites in the state
The almost non-existent abortion rights of Texans may be further diminished as a new proposed bill by Republican legislators in the state seeks to ban access to websites that are “intended to assist or facilitate efforts to obtain an elective abortion or an abortion-inducing drug.” Since the ban on abortion in the state in 2022 following the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, Texas Republicans are now targeting internet service providers in the proposed bill’s attempt to control how the internet is accessed.
HB2690, introduced by Republican State House Representative Steve Toth last week, calls upon ISPs to “make every reasonable and technologically feasible effort to block Internet access” to sites that provide information on how to obtain or access an abortion or abortion-inducing drugs, specifically, mifepristone and misoprostol. Rep. Toth’s bill also explicitly called out six websites: aidaccess.org, heyjane.co, plancpills.org, mychoix.co, justthepill.com, and carafem.org. This also prohibits individuals from creating a website “that assists or facilitates a person’s effort in obtaining an abortion-inducing drug,” according to the bill.
As The New Republic notes, medication abortions, i.e., abortions that can be performed outside of a doctor’s office using pills, represent more than half of all abortions in the United States.
While this bill doesn’t singularly target pregnant women, it does encourage citizens to seek civil action by allowing them to sue ISPs or individuals they believe to be violating the proposed law. This is in line with Texas’s “bounty hunter” approach to its abortion ban, calling upon citizens to enforce the law.
Broadly, the bill also attempts to expand its scope outside of Texas through purposefully ambiguous language establishing “civil liability for distribution of abortion-inducing drugs.” According to the ordinance, “the law of this state applies to the use of an abortion-inducing drug by a resident of this state, regardless of where the use of the drug occurs.”
ISPs are also financially incentivized to block as many websites and apps as possible by liability shields the bill would create. ISPs would have “absolute and nonwaivable immunity from liability or suit” for any “action taken to comply with the requirements of this subchapter, or to restrict access to or availability of the information or material described,” the bill says. It also provides immunity to ISPs that take proactive measures in blocking broadband access to individuals “who provide or aid or abet elective abortions or who manufacture, mail, distribute, transport, or provide abortion-inducing drugs.”
The proposed bill is a nightmare for free speech activists and supporters of internet statutes such as Section 230 and its kin. And despite a clause claiming it doesn’t apply to First Amendment-protected speech, critics of Rep. Toth’s bill have pointed out on social media that this legislation is trying to abridge free speech. Mashable attempted to speak to Toth’s office for comment but could not reach him or a spokesperson at the time of this writing.
As The Verge points out, proposed legislation such as HB2690 that allows for ISP blocking provisions would run afoul of net neutrality rules. However, under President Biden’s current FCC administration, the agency is currently deadlocked trying to confirm his nominee for commissioner, and thus, can’t reinstate rules that were rolled back during the Trump presidency. Extreme laws like these usually don’t pass, the Verge notes, but they can’t be ignored.
Despite Texas’ draconian laws on abortion, there are already attempts to skirt these potential new rulings on accessible abortion information. Mobile billboards sponsored by the nonprofit Mayday.Health are visiting college campuses in 14 states with abortion bans carrying a reminder that abortion pills are still accessible all across the country. The traveling billboards are fitted with QR codes that direct people to resources specific to the state where they are hoping to have pills delivered. Campuses in Austin and Dallas should expect to see the billboard soon in the coming days as March celebrates Women’s History Month.
As the current legal backdrop continues to attack the right to abortion across the country, here is information you can use to help abortion funds and reproductive networks around the nation.
Abortion websites would be blocked in Texas under new bill
A new bill in Texas would require internet service providers inside the state to block sites that provide abortion information, as well making it illegal to host or even provide domain registration for sites that help people in Texas obtain or pay for abortions.
The bill, filed February 23rd by representative Steve Toth, attempts to crush access to services that ship the pregnancy-terminating drugs mifepristone and misoprostol, as well as aid funds that raise money to cover the cost of abortion-related expenses. Under the new bill’s rules, it would be unlawful to “create, edit, upload, publish, host, maintain, or register a domain name for an internet website, platform, or other interactive computer service that assists or facilitates a…
: Acxiom, the giant data broker, says it doesn’t collect information that could be used for abortion prosecutions
Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler accused of ‘sexual assault of minor’ in lawsuit with shock ‘teen pregnancy and abortion’ claims
AEROSMITH frontman, Steven Tyler, has been accused of sexual assault of a minor in the mid-1970s by a woman claiming to be a former girlfriend.
The woman claimed to have had a sexual relationship with Tyler that began when she was underage, according to a lawsuit obtained by Rolling Stone.
The relationship allegedly began in 1973 when the plaintiff, Julia Holcomb, was 16[/caption]
Holcomb alleged that Tyler ‘coerced and persuaded’ her into believing that they were having a ‘romantic love affair’[/caption]
Tyler is being accused of sexual assault, sexual battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress by plaintiff Julia Holcomb.
The lawsuit alleges that Tyler convinced Holcomb’s mother to give him guardianship over her when she was 16, allowing the teen to live with him.
During this time, Holcomb claims the two had a sexual affair that last for three years.
Tyler wasn’t explicitly named in the suit as it named the defendants as Defendant Doe 1 and Does 2 through 50, however, Holcomb has publicly spoken about her alleged relationship with Tyler in the past.
The lawsuit also takes quotes from Tyler’s memoir, Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?, in which he said he “almost took a teen bride” and that “her parents fell in love with me, signed a paper over for me to have custody, so I wouldn’t get arrested if I took her out of state. I took her on tour with me.”
Tyler did not state the “teen bride’s” name in the memoir however, a Julia Halcomb was named in the acknowledgments.
Holcomb claimed in the suit that she was “powerless to resist” Tyler’s “power, fame, and substantial financial ability.”
She also alleges that Tyler “coerced and persuaded” her into believing that they were having a “romantic love affair.”
Holcomb claims that she met Tyler just after her 16th birthday – he would have been 25 years old at this time – when Aerosmith played a concert in Portland, Oregon, in 1973.
The suit alleges that Tyler took Holcomb back to his hotel, where they spoke about the teenager’s age before he allegedly “performed various acts of criminal sexual conduct upon” her and then sent her home in a taxi the next morning.
Tyler allegedly bought Holcomb a plane ticket to the next Aerosmith show in Seattle, which the suit claims was due to the fact that she was a minor and could not legally travel with him across state lines.
After the Seattle show, Tyler allegedly performed more sex acts on Holcomb, who flew back to Portland in the morning.
After Tyler became Holcomb’s guardian, the suit claims that he was able to travel with her easily without worrying about criminal prosecution.
This timeline apparently matches Tyler’s own words from his memoir.
“She was sixteen, she knew how to nasty, and there wasn’t a hair on it,” Tyler wrote in his memoir.
“With my bad self being twenty-six and she barely old enough to drive and sexy as hell, I just fell madly in love with her. She was a cute skinny little tomboy dressed up as Little Bo Peep. She was my heart’s desire, my partner in crimes of passion.”
Tyler allegedly told Holcomb’s mother that he would be able to give her better support than what she was receiving at home and promised to enroll her in school.
However, the suit claimed that he “did not meaningfully follow through on these promises and instead continued to travel with, assault and provide alcohol and drugs to Plaintiff.”
Holcomb also claimed that the relationship resulted in a pregnancy in 1975 when she was 17, however, she got an abortion at Tyler’s insistence following an apartment fire.
She claimed that Tyler said smoke inhalation and lack of oxygen would have been harmful to the baby, however, the lawsuit claimed that a medical professional told Holcomb the unborn baby wasn’t harmed by the fire.
The suit claimed that Holcomb was hesitant about getting the abortion but that Tyler threatened to stop supporting her if she didn’t have the procedure.
Holcomb allegedly left Tyler after having the abortion and returned to Portland, where she became a devout Catholic and met her husband.
The U.S. Sun has reached out to Tyler’s reps for comment but has not heard back at the time of writing.
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Meta won’t let staff discuss topics like abortion, gun control and vaccines at work
Meta employees were told that they should not discuss sensitive issues like abortion, gun control, pending legislation and vaccine efficacy at work. Fortune reported on these changes, citing a leaked internal memo from Lori Goler, head of people at Meta. TechCrunch confirmed the report with a Meta spokesperson. “As Mark mentioned recently, we need to […]
Meta won’t let staff discuss topics like abortion, gun control and vaccines at work by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch