Former President Donald Trump reaffirmed his commitment to criminalize abortion, telling Time last month he would not intervene in decisions to monitor or prosecute pregnant people. Trump’s fervor to limit reproductive freedom is far from surprising—after all, he has repeatedly taken credit for overturning Roe v. Wade. But buried in the wide-ranging interview was a new clue to how he might go about it: the Comstock Act.

The Comstock Act is an 1873 law that bans the mailing of “obscene” materials, including birth control and “instruments” used for abortions. This so-called  “zombie” law has flown under the radar for the past 50 or so years, largely because it was rendered unconstitutional by Roe v. Wade. But in our post-Roe era, antiabortion advocates—including Speaker Mike Johnson, America First Legal, and the Heritage Foundation—are attempting to resurrect Comstock and use it to ban access to medication abortion. Some argue an anti-choice president could go farther and use Comstock to ban abortion outright, nationwide, without a vote from Congress. And while the Biden administration has refused to enforce Comstock, a future president could easily decide the opposite. Trump himself flirted with enforcement of the Comstock Act in his Time interview, noting he would make a statement about the law “in the coming weeks.” 

The threat of Comstock is real and should be taken seriously. But this isn’t just a reproductive rights issue—it’s also about tech accountability. That’s because from emails to search queries to things we buy online, virtually everything we do online is tracked and stored by Big Tech companies. And all of this data is evidence that federal officials can, and will, use to prosecute abortion.

As you read this, Big Tech’s surveillance practices are already putting abortion seekers at risk. Tech companies have built multibillion-dollar empires by collecting, storing, and selling as much user data as possible. And despite their promises to the contrary, many of these companies are still hoarding abortion seekers’ sensitive location and search history data.

We know because we tested it. In a series of experiments, my organization Accountable Tech used Google Maps to route to Planned Parenthood clinics in seven states across the country to simulate the same kind of stop one would make for an appointment. In January 2024, we published findings  that showed Google was continuing to track and retain location data from abortion seekers about 50 percent of the time. We also found that Google was continuing to collect and store Google Maps search query data by default—in other words, simple searches for terms like “abortion” or “Planned Parenthood” will be stored in Google’s cloud for 18 months. 

This data is already being used to build criminal cases on abortion. Between 2018 and 2020, Google received 5,764 “geofence” warrants from police in the 10 states that have banned abortion. And privacy advocates have also long warned about Google’s extremely high rate of compliance (roughly 80 percent) with law enforcement authorities. 

If Comstock is resurrected, these criminal subpoenas for our data will exponentially increase. 

Medication abortion currently accounts for more than 60 percent of abortions in the United States. It is frequently provided via telehealth, making it often the only option for patients who live far from a reproductive health provider, can’t take off work, or are unable to travel. 

If Comstock is used to ban medication abortion, abortion seekers will lose this option overnight. That means thousands of women would be forced to travel for abortion—often out of state—with many of them turning to GPS tools like Google Maps to find and navigate to far-away clinics. And the more of this personal location data Big Tech companies collect, the more data they will have to turn over to law enforcement under subpoena. 

Of course, the consequences will be even more dire if Comstock is used to ban all abortions (and not just medication abortion). Virtually everything we do online is tracked and stored by Big Tech companies, from the emails we send to the things we buy. All of that data could be considered evidence in a criminal abortion trial.

This means one thing: If we want to protect abortion seekers, we have to enshrine reproductive rights and take on Big Tech’s business model. The Comstock Act is the latest threat to reproductive rights abortion in our post-Roe world, but it won’t be the last. 

Thankfully, there are already a number of efforts underway to do just that. California and Washington have passed reproductive privacy legislation at the state level, and in Congress, Representative Sara Jacobs recently introduced legislation to protect patients’ reproductive health information from being used in criminal cases, including search and location data. These laws—along with broader efforts to ban surveillance advertising practices writ large—would go a long way toward stopping Big Tech’s dangerous data hoarding. 

The drafters of the Comstock Act could have never imagined the internet, let alone the idea of multi-billion tech companies hoarding our personal data. But if this zombie law is revived, it will be Big Tech companies on the frontlines of enforcement. It’s past time we protected abortion seekers—and all Americans—from the threat of Big Tech.