On top of the 20+ laws that ban or severely restrict abortion access across the country, a handful of lawmakers in Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Idaho are now taking the assault on reproductive rights a step further. They want to criminalize any person or group––like an abortion fund––that helps someone cross state lines for an abortion. While abortion pills are available by mail in all 50 states, some abortion seekers need in-person care. Proposed “abortion travel bans” are designed to terrify people out of traveling to access that care. In a few counties along Texas’ border, anti-abortion travel restrictions have successfully passed into law, and others may soon follow.

Post-Roe, we have already seen how technology can be weaponized to censor information about abortion access and to criminalize abortion seekers. Now that efforts to restrict abortion travel are accelerating, it’s more important than ever that lawmakers take action to enshrine the right to abortion into law, and for tech companies to do everything in their power to limit the collection of unnecessary data, protect user privacy, and end the censorship of life saving abortion information. If they don’t, we’ll only see more incidents of Big Tech data serving as key evidence in anti-abortion lawsuits against abortion facilitators, providers, or seekers.