| Abstrakt: |
On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade, a ruling that had safeguarded the constitutional right to abortion for nearly 50 years. This study asks how digital surveillance practices pose harm to people seeking reproductive healthcare in a post-Roe United States. It relies on 22 semistructured interviews with experts across three sectors and aims to trace three pathways of harm: legal, ethical, and physical. While past studies have examined these harms separately, little research has been done to demonstrate how all three are interconnected. This study finds that while digital surveillance has led to cases of criminalization of abortion and other pregnancy outcomes, a more profound impact is the "chilling effect"1 it has on people seeking reproductive healthcare across the country. This chilling effect discourages engagement with the formal healthcare system, increasing the scope and severity of the physical harm associated with this avoidance of care. Each step of this chain reaction is linked to many ethical concerns, most notably its disproportionate impact on marginalized communities. It is worth noting that not all harms detailed in this study began directly from the Dobbs decision, nor would they necessarily end in the case of its reversal. While undoubtedly exacerbated by Dobbs and the digital surveillance ecosystem, nearly all these harms are indicative of much more significant and more systemic nationwide issues, such as high maternal mortality and morbidity rates, income inequality, and surveillance capitalism, compounded by endemic racism in American policing. While illustrating the impacts of the egregious rights violations that are the Dobbs decision and its accompanying digital surveillance, this research falls within the broader academic literature on surveillance capitalism and bodily autonomy, and I hope that it will contribute to an enhanced understanding of the field of human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
