When Robin Marty was writing her 2021 book The New Handbook for a Post-Roe America: The Complete Guide to Abortion Legality, Access, and Practical Support, people often asked her why she didn’t just make it an online resource.
“I said, ‘Well, we can't guarantee that online is always going to be accessible for people,’” says Marty, who is director of operations at the West Alabama Women's Center in Tuscaloosa. Her concern that women might one day be restricted from reading about abortion online proved prescient.
State lawmakers in Texas are considering a bill introduced last month that would make it illegal to provide information on how to access abortion. The bill would also require internet service providers to block websites offering content like that in Marty’s book, allow prosecution of abortion pill “distribution networks,” and permit anyone to sue a person who shared anything about how to access a medical abortion. The proposal borrows from a Texas law passed in 2021 that offers a cash bounty to citizens who sue a person who helped facilitate access to abortion care.
The Texas proposal to restrict information about abortion follows a recent flurry of attempts to limit reproductive rights in the US, with a particular focus on medical abortions—that is, abortions induced by medication. Experts worry that if passed, the bill could incentivize platforms and internet service providers (ISPs) to censor abortion-related content more broadly for fear of costly court cases.
“It’s scaring the platforms and the ISPs and the speakers into thinking that they can be liable for the speech,” says Jennifer Pinsof, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “So it’s having a chilling effect and advancing the goal of keeping this information from being accessible to people online.”
Access to good information about abortion could become even more important as new restrictions are placed on the procedure. Earlier this month, a Texas judge ruled to suspend the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, a pill that in combination with misoprostol is part of the standard process for a medical abortion. This week, a federal appeals court ruled that though mifepristone could still be used for abortions, it can no longer be prescribed by mail.
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The proposal to block Texans from accessing information about abortion, introduced by three male Republican representatives, is the most far-reaching attempt to date to limit how easily people learn about abortion access in the US. But it is not without precedent. Arizona has had a ban on advertising abortion services on its books since 1873. Other states, including Virginia, Louisiana, Michigan, and California, have restrictions on advertising the procedure.
Free speech is generally protected in the US under the First Amendment to the Constitution, while technology platforms have successfully argued that Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act means they can’t be held liable for content posted by users.
However, the bill being debated in Texas could essentially sidestep at least some of these protections by enlisting citizens to police information about abortions. Instead of the government cracking down on content, citizens would file civil court cases, with potential targets including social platforms and ISPs hosting websites or social posts offering information about abortion.
Pinsof says companies facing such legal threats would have little incentive to defend the free speech of their users if it helped them avoid litigation. “We’ve seen over and over in different contexts that platforms are vulnerable to censorship pressure because they're afraid of being sued,” says Pinsof. “So it's easier to take stuff down than it is to potentially open yourself up to liability.”
Another part of the law would require ISPs to “make every reasonable and technologically feasible effort to block internet access to information or material intended to assist or facilitate efforts to obtain an elective abortion or an abortion-inducing drug.” It also shields them from legal liability resulting from such takedowns, which Pinsof thinks could further encourage companies to remove content related to abortion.
Platforms are currently watching a case in the Supreme Court which argues that tech companies can in fact be held liable for content promoted on their platforms. Any weakening of that protection could expose companies to additional legal hazards in Texas under the proposed bill if they allowed pro-choice content to be shared on their services. Pinsof says the law can be read as making the provision of information about abortion “illegal both for speakers themselves, and also for platforms.”
WIRED reached out to Twitter, Reddit, Meta, and TikTok to ask whether laws like the Texas bill would induce them to change their moderation policies on abortion-related content. None responded. However, experts say that the platforms might preemptively begin limiting content related to abortion.
Last year, WIRED found that Meta was already restricting some abortion content on its platforms, regularly removing posts that referenced accessing abortion pills under rules barring the sale of “illegal or regulated goods."
The Texas bill could also have major implications for search engines, making it more difficult for women to find accurate information about abortion services. So-called “crisis pregnancy centers”—operated by anti-choice organizations—often use promoted results to get themselves to the top of searches for abortion providers.
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“There’s effectively competition between pro- and anti-choice groups to win those slots at the top of Google search,” says Callum Hood, head of research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit that tracks disinformation. “There will be no alternative in search results other than what anti-choice groups have to say about abortion,” he says.
Neither Google nor Microsoft responded to requests for comment about how or whether search results or ads might be modified or restricted in response to the Texas bill.
Hood says he worries that censorship could lead ISPs to decide that hosting abortion-related websites carries too many risks. ISPs have previously blocked websites for illicit materials like child pornography.
“The easiest thing for them to say is just, ‘We're not going to host any website that’s to do with abortion. Full stop,’” says Hood. “It is going to create an incentive for them to just take simple steps, which is to avoid any ambiguity over whether or not they are facilitating access to information about abortion-inducing drugs.”
Marty says that, should the bill be enacted, activists will work out ways around it, as they have for previous restrictions. But she acknowledges that these strategies may still leave many women without critical information, because digital information has become so important.
Pro-choice activists and educators sometimes use QR codes, which can easily be printed as stickers or posters and left inconspicuously in public places to point people to abortion information. “Most of the activism has already and will continue to pivot to QR codes and other ways of providing informational links without the actual information being visible in a text form,” she says. “But even a QR code is a whisper network. You have to know that this is a thing to find the information on.”
Updated 4-14-2023, 3.10 pm EDT: A previous version of this article incorrectly described one part of the proposed Texas law as in conflict with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.