In February 2025, Adriana Smith, who was about nine weeks pregnant at the time, was declared brain dead by doctors. However, the state of Georgia forcibly kept her on life support until doctors delivered her baby on June 13, 2025, despite her prior lack of consent or ability to do so. This is because of Georgia’s restrictive abortion laws.

If you thought I was plagiarizing from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale or the Hulu series of the same name to prove a point, I promise you I’m not. In the Hulu series (specifically Season 3 Episode 9) Gilead keeps Matthew, who is brain-dead, on life support so that her dead body can deliver her fetus.

Granted, not every state is like this, and Adriana’s case is especially egregious. So, I’ll pull back and then look at other ways that the overturning of Roe v Wade has impacted women in subtler, more nuanced ways, like with digital surveillance. This was another worry that experts brought up because of a high-profile case early on involving Celeste Burgess and her mother, Jessica Burgess. Although the investigation into Celeste’s self-managed abortion started in April 2022, police initiated an official investigation after gaining access to Facebook messages between the mother and daughter in June. The pair was found guilty, and Celeste was given two years of probation, while her mother was sentenced to two years in prison.

Digital surveillance of women didn’t stop there. In fact, it only increased and became an incredibly lucrative frontier for the data broker industry. Data brokers are companies that collect and sell data from other companies, like Meta, to hospitals and sell that data to third parties, criminal scammers, government agencies, financial institutions, insurance companies, and law enforcement agencies. Basically, a data broker will sell your information to anyone willing to spend the money to get access to your data, which can range from sensitive information like health information and social security numbers to the last thing you bought online, or if you went to or were by an abortion clinic or Planned Parenthood recently.

That’s right. Anyone can buy any information about you online, and it usually goes to the highest bidder, regardless of who they are or what they’ll use your information for.

So, why does that all matter, especially if you are part of the “I have nothing to hide” crowd? Well, you do, and should have things to hide, especially things you want to keep private, like your social security information, because well, that can and will be used against you. As Carissa Véliz warns in her book, Privacy is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data, your data can and will be used against you, even when and after you die. Yep, even when you die, data brokers still own your data, not you, not your family, but the company.

This type of digital surveillance doesn’t stop at apps or your phone. Autonomous vehicles take an immense amount of data to function. Yes, that’s right, your data. To continue operating, they need to continue collecting data about and on you, which they then sell. Car manufacturers are collecting data across the board, ranging from your sex life to your eating habits. They’re able to collect your data from your infotainment or driver-assistance systems, any apps you use while driving, and contacts and private messages from your Bluetooth.

Digital surveillance is amplified by policy contexts it falls within, such as the rise in abortion bans across the U.S., including restrictions on interstate travel. For example, Texas has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, including some proposed laws and ordinances that would restrict interstate mobility and bar women of reproductive age from leaving the state, or allow prosecuting a woman for receiving an out-of-state abortion.

Some of these proposals have been successfully passed, such as in areas like Lubbock, Texas, but with the caveat that only private citizens can file lawsuits against those seeking an abortion. However, such proposals remain unpopular with Americans overall, even in conservative strongholds like Amarillo, Texas. For instance, on November 5, 2024, Amarillo residents unexpectedly rejected Proposition A, an ordinance that would have made it illegal to use local streets and highways to obtain an out-of-state abortion. Texas is not the only state pursuing such abortion travel bans, despite growing legal challenges and public resistance.

The paradoxical response in Texas illustrates how contested these proposals are and the extensive, invasive digital technologies required to implement and enforce them. This intersection of restrictive abortion bans and the rapid and largely unregulated increase in digital surveillance should worry us when we understand that technologies like autonomous cars depend on such lax digital regulations. Increasingly, we have seen car manufacturers, academics, media outlets, and tech billionaires espousing that the future of transport is autonomous. Some philosophers, like Mark Howard and Robert Sparrow, even argue that we should eventually ban human driving and let autonomous vehicles take the wheel. However, as I have shown, even early autonomous vehicles are subjecting Americans to unprecedented digital surveillance.

Now, while this piece focuses on digital surveillance affecting women in the post-Roe v Wade era, the same ethical concerns apply to other heavily surveilled populations, including political dissidents, immigrants, and historically marginalized and minority communities.

Moreover, the issues I have raised throughout this piece highlight the potential for driverless vehicles to play a significant role in the expansion of the surveillance state, thereby reducing or undermining bodily autonomy and freedom of mobility for millions of Americans.

But let’s not get distracted by the hype, the moral panic, or the hopelessness of it all. Instead, empower yourself through the data you can control.

I’ll close with six helpful recommendations Véliz makes in her book:

1. Next time you post something, ask: “How will this be used against me?”
2. Say “no.” Reject cookies on websites whenever you can and opt out of any tracking or AI features as much as you can.
3. Respect others’ privacy. Before posting a photo or video of someone else, ask for their consent and don’t hesitate to set boundaries for your own digital privacy.
4. Go analog.
5. Demand privacy. Demand that companies and the government respect your data.
6. Do not submit to injustice or believe yourself powerless.

Admittedly, these recommendations can be difficult to follow, given how intertwined the digital world is with our physical world. It would be more convenient to ignore her advice. However, it is important to ask yourself how willing you are to compromise your and your family’s privacy, including your children’s, for convenience. Keeping that in mind, implementing one of Véliz’s six suggestions will help reduce the amount of digital surveillance you willingly impose on yourself.

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