Facebook is reportedly gathering data on those who visit the websites of crisis pregnancy clinics, causing privacy experts to worry that information about abortion seekers could be misused.
Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting and The Markup evaluated nearly 2,500 crisis pregnancy center websites and discovered that at least 294 of them shared visitor data with Facebook. Information on whether a person was considering abortion or seeking emergency contraception or a pregnancy test was among the sensitive personal data.
Concerns about how such information could be used to track down abortion seekers have grown after Politico published a story about a leaked Supreme Court draft ruling suggesting the court could overturn the historic Roe v. Wade decision.
Roe v. Wade is a landmark Supreme Court decision that established a woman's constitutional right to choose abortion without excessive government interference.
Under the alias Jane Roe, a pregnant single woman filed a class action lawsuit contesting a Texas statute that prohibited abortion except in circumstances when the mother's life was in danger.
The court ruled that legislation like the Texas ban violated, among other rights, the due process provision of the 14th Amendment, which protects the "right to privacy, including a woman's qualified right to terminate her pregnancy." in a decision written by Justice Harry Blackmun.
Later cases upheld the right to an abortion during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, after which a fetus is no longer regarded viable outside the womb. The court also decided in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992 that restrictions could not place an "undue burden" on reproductive rights.
In May, U.S. lawmakers requested Google to stop collecting and storing user location data, claiming that it may be used to track down women seeking abortions. The Supreme Court's decision is not yet final, but it would overturn federal constitutional protections for abortion rights. Individual states would have the option of restricting or prohibiting abortion.
According to Dale Hogan, a representative for Facebook's parent company, Meta, the company's system is "designed to filter out potentially sensitive data" and sending "sensitive information about people" through the firm's business tools is against Facebook's guidelines.
Reveal and The Markup said it is unknown whether Facebook's filters captured the sensitive material. Privacy experts indicated that improving the social media platforms' filters or getting rid of a feature called the Meta Pixel, which allows websites to track visitor activity, are two approaches to prevent data exploitation.
