Forced reproduction: abortion access in a landscape of data violence

Abstract

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned federally sanctioned legal protections for abortions in America, returning legislative power over reproductive rights to individual states. Consequently, access to reproductive care has become increasingly location-dependent. The Dobbs decision and its ongoing consequences occur during a time of intensified location-data-tracking, with geofencing, licence plate reading, and IP address tracking becoming commonplace. Data intermediaries collect locational data about reproductive healthcare and their users and sell this information to courts and civil litigants, such as anti-abortion organizations. Reading this context through Anna Lauren Hoffmann’s framework of data’s discursive violence, this article is a theoretical intervention in the reproductive imperative of data intermediaries. While popular responses to tracking practices call for increased data protections, this paper challenges the position that legislation can help undo these harms. In examining the practices of data intermediaries and the legal contexts that protect them, this article argues that data intermediaries are not simply bad actors profiting from post-Dobbs regulations but they reify a culture of forced reproduction through the instrument of data violence.