来源：《华盛顿邮报》
原文刊登日期：2022年7月4日
In the 21st century, our phones might know we are pregnant before the people closest to us do — a reality that, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, has become more dangerous than ever.
在21世纪，我们的手机可能比我们最亲近的人更早知道我们怀孕了——随着罗伊诉韦德案的推翻，这一现实变得比以往任何时候都更加危险。
Digital-privacy advocates have long warned about the amount of our personal information that companies hoover up each day. Reproductive health data has never been an exception, but while this data has always been valuable to advertisers, now it will also be valuable to law enforcement in states where abortion is criminalized. Naturally, apps such as period trackers hold lots of knowledge about when people are or could be expecting, but so do services as widely used as Google, Apple and Facebook: Search histories, for instance, can reveal queries about nearby clinics; location tracking can show whether someone has actually taken the trip.
长期以来，数字隐私倡导者一直警告说，企业每天都在收集我们的个人信息。生殖健康数据从来都不例外，这些数据对广告商来说一直很有价值，但现在它也将对堕胎被视为犯罪的州的执法部门很有价值。当然，月经追踪器等应用程序掌握了大量关于人们何时怀孕或想要怀孕的信息，但谷歌、苹果和脸书等广泛使用的服务也是如此：例如，搜索历史可以显示对附近诊所的查询；位置跟踪可以显示是否有人实际去过诊所。
The vast majority of proposed laws in states likely to impose heightened abortion restrictions focus on punishing providers rather than patients. But patients’ data could be used to prosecute providers. Some laws also do explicitly punish women for ending their pregnancies, or leave open the possibility that a zealous prosecutor could seek to do so. This isn’t a hypothetical guess of a grim future; it has happened already, even with constitutional protections in place. One advocacy organization counts 1,800 cases from 1973 to 2020 of women seeking to terminate their pregnancies who were prosecuted or targeted for interventions.
在可能实施更严格堕胎限制的州，绝大多数拟议法律的重点是惩罚堕胎服务提供者而不是患者。但患者的数据可以用来起诉堕胎服务提供者。一些法律也确实明确惩罚终止妊娠的女性，或者为热心的检察官寻求这样做的可能性留下了余地。这并不是对令人沮丧的未来的假设猜测；这种情况已经发生了，即使在堕胎权有宪法保护的以前。一个倡导组织统计了1973年至2020年间1800起寻求终止妊娠的妇女被起诉或作为干预目标的案件。
Technology companies can help by refusing to comply with requests for data that they believe are unlawful. More important, they can collect less of this sort of information in the first place. Congress can help even more by setting rules that require precisely that step. Some members have already introduced legislation devoted to protecting reproductive health data. Though passing them might be impossible given the lack of Republican support, lawmakers should seek to include a provision specifically protecting this information in the larger bipartisan, bicameral privacy bill moving through Capitol Hill. The White House, meanwhile, is reportedly preparing a letter to send to the Federal Trade Commission urging the agency to bar unfair and deceptive practices in this area.
科技公司可以通过拒绝遵从它们认为非法的数据请求来提供帮助。更重要的是，它们可以从一开始就少收集这类信息。国会可以通过制定明确要求采取这一措施的法规来提供更多帮助。一些国会成员已经提出专门保护生殖健康数据的立法。尽管由于缺乏共和党的支持，这些法案可能无法通过，但议员们应该寻求在国会正在通过的更大的两党两院制隐私法案中包括一项专门保护这些信息的条款。与此同时，据报道，白宫正准备致信联邦贸易委员会，敦促该机构禁止这一领域的不公平和欺骗性做法。
Women across the country are already deleting reproductive health apps from their devices. They’re preparing to hide their identities as they search the web for resources, and to ensure any sensitive communications are encrypted. The burden shouldn’t be on them to protect themselves now that their right to choose is imperiled.
全美各地的女性已经在删除她们电子设备上的生殖健康应用程序。她们正准备在网上搜索资源时隐藏自己的身份，并确保任何敏感通信都被加密。她们的选择权受到了威胁，但保护自己的责任不应该落在她们身上。