Police In Texas Use Dystopian Surveillance Method To Track Woman Trying To Receive Abortion Care

Texas police used a dystopian surveillance method to track down a woman who was traveling out of state to receive abortion care.

An officer with the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office used over 83,000 automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras earlier this month in a bid to trace the woman.

Data obtained by 404 Media shows that the officer searched for the woman in Washington and Illinois, where abortion is legal, and that the search continued for one month.

On May 9, the officer entered “had an abortion, search for female” into a nationwide system of cameras owned by a company called Flock.

The cameras are typically used for tracing missing people or in cases of car theft. They work by scanning the registration plate and model of a vehicle, making it easier to track people’s movements.

Advocates have raised serious concerns about how Johnson County turned the cameras into a tool for tracking a woman they suspected had an abortion.

The Sheriff’s Office told 404 Media they were concerned for the woman’s life as she had self-administered an abortion.

“Her family was worried that she was going to bleed to death, and we were trying to find her to get her to a hospital,” Sheriff Adam King said.

“We weren’t trying to block her from leaving the state or whatever to get an abortion,” he added. “It was about her safety.”

Two days later, the Sheriff’s Office managed to contact the woman and verified she was safe.

While the office performed a nationwide search and received hits for the unidentified woman in Dallas, this is not how she was traced, King said.

Ashley Emery, senior policy analyst in reproductive health and rights at the National Partnership for Women & Families, said the stakes of police monitoring couldn’t be higher.

“The risks of this intrusive government monitoring cannot be overstated: law enforcement could deploy this surveillance technology to target and try to build cases against pregnant people who travel for abortion care and those who help them,” she told 404 Media.

“This incident is undeniably a harbinger of more AI-enabled reproductive surveillance and investigations to come. Especially for women of color who are already over-surveilled and over-policed, the stakes couldn’t be higher.”

Texas maintains one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the U.S., with limited exceptions and ongoing legislative efforts to further curtail access.

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, abortion has been illegal in the state, except when necessary to save the life of a pregnant person.

Unlike some other states, Texas law does not provide exceptions for cases of rape, incest, or fatal fetal abnormalities.

In Washington and Illinois, where officers searched for the woman, abortion rights are protected.

In both states, abortion is legal up to the point of fetal viability, usually around 24 weeks, and allowed later if necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant person.

The Digital Defense Fund (DDF), which focuses on security and technology resources in the abortion rights movement, said that surveillance tactics were sadly not new.

“We saw the groundwork for this laid pretty early,” DDF director Kate Bertash said.

“You had anti-abortion activists doing surveillance of abortion clinics, license plates, the people driving in and out, but they would stand in the parking lot with pen and paper writing down license plates.”

“When you have this legacy of manual surveillance and then a large tech company offers this type of surveillance as a service, those same tactics, techniques, and customers coming from an anti-abortion legacy are handed these automated tools handed on a silver platter, it’s shocking to see it, but also it felt inevitable,” Bertash added.

In a statement to 404 Media, Flock told the outlet it does not decide which criminal codes to enforce.

“Flock is committed to ensuring every customer, including law enforcement, can leverage technology in a way that reflects their values, and we support democratically-authorized governing bodies to determine what that means for their community.

“Flock does not decide which criminal codes to enforce in Texas or Washington. We rely on the democratic process.

“And in this case, it appears Flock was used to try to locate a vulnerable person who may have been a danger to herself.”