US police use digital data to prosecute abortions

https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/27/digital-data-roe-wade-reproductive-privacy/

by arkadiyt • 3 years ago

19 52 3 years ago

techcrunch.com

josephcsible6• 3 years ago

If you're upset by this, would you also be upset by them using the same digital data to prosecute murders of adults?

justahuman742• 3 years ago

Why are adult humans relevant, we're talking about not-quite-humans-yet

bobkazamakis• 3 years ago

adults are citzens and pay taxes

josephcsible6• 3 years ago

What about illegal immigrants who get paid cash under the table? They're not citizens and don't pay taxes.

krapp• 3 years ago

No, because murder is murder, but abortion is not.

nonethewiser5• 3 years ago

Thus, it's about abortion and not police using digital records

woodruffw2• 3 years ago

I think it’s rude to ask rhetorical questions like this. Regardless of whether you agree, you definitely know that plenty of people don’t consider abortion murder (or anything close to murder).

29athrowaway7• 3 years ago

Let's see:

- There is an organism that is alive.

- The organism belongs to the human species (as per DNA).

- The organism is separate from the parents (different DNA).

- It's an intervention that results in loss of life.

- It's premeditated (regardless of justification).

Those are all irrefutable facts. The gestation phase doesn't change the facts above.

What do we call a premeditated intervention that results in the loss of life by forced means of an alive member of the human species?

Use any word you want. These semantics will remain the same regardless of which word you use. (edit)

I also do not care about what specific word you use, I care about the implications above.

josephcsible6• 3 years ago

My point of asking this question is to try to distinguish two different reasons people would be upset by this: because rather than enforcing all laws, they only want police to enforce laws they agree with ("no" answerers), or because they don't want police to ever do digital surveillance, even when it's narrowly targeted to a single person and done with a proper warrant issued with probable cause ("yes" answerers).

saenns2• 3 years ago

would you download a car?

saenns2• 3 years ago

but yes, i would rather they not use the data to prosecute murder

jupp0r2• 3 years ago

Would you be upset to get charged with a crime for getting appendix surgery?

nonethewiser5• 3 years ago

This proves his point though. It's not about police using digital records. It's about abortion.

xiphias2• 3 years ago

I'm much more upset that this has to happen for Facebook to finally get to E2E encryption. It shouldn't be a political decision.

The police has to try everything legally possible to investigate a crime. The only new thing here is that right now the law is on the more conservative side.

password115• 3 years ago

Police had made the discovery after obtaining a warrant that required Meta to hand over their conversations on Facebook Messenger. The messages, which were not encrypted, showed the two had discussed obtaining and using abortion pills.

I read the headline thinking they were using digital medical data, i.e., what insurance companies do. That would be legitimately frightening.

Nope, police are just exploiting bad opsec. Don't bring your phone to your robbery, don't talk about your alleged crimes on Facebook Messenger. Lots of people don't know that these channels are not secure.

(Edit: Abortion is currently illegal in some U.S. jurisdictions. There is debate about whether it should or shouldn't be.)

jupp0r2• 3 years ago

You shouldn't have to do opsec to get medical care.

syzarian2• 3 years ago

In the U.S. people often times are viewed as getting what they deserve for decisions made during periods of non-hyper vigilance. In our quest for an Ayn Randian paradise we believe it is a person’s fault if they aren’t hyper vigilant at all times.

password115• 3 years ago

Completely agree.

mrgovson• 3 years ago

That sounds like something someone really depressed would say. Kind of a crazy thing to imagine someone casually saying 10 years ago.

"Hah it's a simple case of being a boiled frog, nothing to see here!"

password115• 3 years ago

That sounds like something someone really depressed would say

What does?

pstuart2• 3 years ago

Courtesy of the same people who cry out for small government. Disgusting.

nonethewiser5• 3 years ago

Something can be smaller overall without being smaller in every regard.

pstuart2• 3 years ago

Seriously, it's not your business.

Once the child is born, then it becomes a member of society and is a social concern. Until then, it's a personal medical issue and sanctimonious citizens have no right to impose their inconsistent religious beliefs upon others.

It's bad policy in bad faith.

nonethewiser5• 3 years ago

She aborted a 23 week old. They found the remains in a trash bag in their backyard. I am happy the police investigated this. Can we step back from the knee jerk partisanship for one second and consider that this is not OK.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/06/jennie-linn-mccorma...

defrost3• 3 years ago

Between 19 and 23 weeks old according to the article.

ie. Perfectly legal in Australia and well within the range that Saint Hildegard of Bingen prepared and administered abortifacients [1].

[1] https://daily.jstor.org/abortion-remedies-medieval-catholic-...

josephcsible6• 3 years ago

From the article you cited:

an infant which is a danger to her body
The loss of the fetus was seen as an acceptable price to pay for saving the life of the pregnant woman.

Was Jennie Linn McCormack's life in danger? Or did she just not want another kid?

josephcsible6• 3 years ago

https://healthier.stanfordchildrens.org/en/premature-babies-...

among those born at 23 weeks, 55% survived.

nonethewiser5• 3 years ago

That's a lot.

The real question is how many lived that weren't aborted?

defrost3• 3 years ago

Worth noting that of those that survived with the full assistence of modern medicine and effectivly an artifical womb outside a body ..

   It is encouraging that half of the children had no or minimal neurodevelopmental impairments at 2 years.

ie. Half had more than "minimal neurodevelopmental impairment" (read linked article for details).

_nalply• 3 years ago

Prohibiting something doesn't prevent it but just makes it more ugly.

I am sure had she gotten help she wouldn't have aborted this late. She would have gotten an earlier abortion or support for her pregnancy.

My personal experience: My wife had an embryo who stopped showing signs of life. She got pills to abort from her gynecologist and we were sent home. It was grisly. We had remains in the toilet and blood everywhere. We were weeping and grossed out.

So you shouldn't mention the remains in a trashbag in the backyard to accuse her. It's true that she ended the life of the fetus and this is very serious. I am Buddhist and all life is holy.

But the police won't be helpful here at all.

xracy• 3 years ago

This feels like a knee jerk partisan reaction couched as a call for tolerance of an otherwise less popular opinion.

What is magic about week 23 that makes this so cut and dry for you?

johnea• 3 years ago

There's really no such thing as "US police", unless you're talking about the FBI or another bureau of the federal department of justice.

The first sentence of the article says "police in Nebraska", then goes on to say "police in Idaho", "police in Arkansas", "Mississippi"...

It's worth pointing out that these states barely have the population of a good sized California county.

A much more accurate title to the article would be "Police in ignorant redneck hayseed states use digital data..."

Also stated: "13 states now ban abortion". Again a more accurate statement "the 13 most low IQ states in the US have banned abortion".

Why anyone with the means to move still lives in those places is the real mystery.

Seriously, If you feel these rights restrictions will affect you, move to California. If you are in a low income bracket, you get free health insurance in California, including abortion...

US police use digital data to prosecute abortions

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