On November 8, 2022 at the Berkman Klein Center, Alejandra Caraballo, Clinical Instructor at Harvard Law School's Cyberlaw Clinic, led a discussion with Kate Bertash, Director of the Digital Defense Fund; Cynthia Conti-Cook, Tech Fellow at the Ford Foundation; and Yveka Pierre, Senior Litigation Counsel for If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice.
In the wake of the Dobbs decision, the national legal landscape has shifted towards immense uncertainty regarding the access and availability of abortion care. Legacy and grassroots organizations continue to operate daily while parsing the legal implications of multi-state bans, and many are under pressure to identify the digital privacy and security needs of vulnerable reproductive health clinic patients.
This panel explored the impact of Dobbs on abortion access, and how technology will be used by those seeking to criminalize it. Criminalization of abortion is not a new phenomenon, but is an issue that is increasingly urgent as states restrict abortion access in an era of increased digital surveillance. This loss of rights to healthcare access occurs during a broader struggle for bodily autonomy for women, people of color, immigrants, and LGBTQI+ people. As such, this panel discussed ways that technologists and the legal community can engage with groups leading the work to limit the harms of technology in ways that ensure more equitable access for multiple groups seeking healthcare.
Speakers
Kate Bertash, Director of the Digital Defense Fund
Kate Bertash works at the intersection of tech, privacy, art, and organizing. She is Director of the Digital Defense Fund, a multidisciplinary team of organizers, engineers, designers, and abortion fund and practical support volunteers who work to leverage technology to defend and secure access to abortion.
Cynthia Conti-Cook, Tech Fellow at the Ford Foundation
Cynthia Conti-Cook is a tech fellow working with the Ford Foundation’s Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Justice team to help build grantees’ capacity to respond to the expanding use of surveillance technologies against immigrant communities, as well as the potential use of technology to criminalize people who seek or aid abortions. As a civil rights litigator and public defender, most recently at the Legal Aid Society of New York, Cynthia led class and individual civil rights federal and state actions, bringing impact litigation on a range of policy matters. She also pioneered a first-of-its-kind public database (CAPstat) that tracks misconduct by New York City police officers, providing a critical means of transparency to an issue that has historically been shrouded in secrecy.
Yveka Pierre, Senior Litigation Counsel for If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice
Yveka Pierre is the senior litigation counsel with If/When/How. Before coming to If/When/How, she was a public defender in NYC defending those who are indigent from targeted criminalization. She brings her experience as a public defender to help inform and develop litigation strategy and analysis to support those who have been criminalized as a result of a self managed abortion, and pregnancy loss. Yveka is a Haitian born, and Florida raised New York transplant who is committed to raging against the dying of the light.
Moderator: Alejandra Caraballo, Clinical Instructor at Harvard Law School's Cyberlaw Clinic
Readings
Wired- Tech Companies Are Not Ready for a Post-Roe Era
NPR- Nebraska cops used Facebook messages to investigate an alleged illegal abortion