The Media Research Center has already endorsed the state-level Orwellian monitoring of women lest they have an abortion. That has grown to demanding that the normally hated “big tech” also monitor women and hand those records over to the state when women think about having an abortion. Tierin-Rose Mandelburg, the MRC’s chief promoter of the abortion-surveillance state, wrote in a May 25 post:
As our nation preps for the overturn of Roe v. Wade, baby killing enthusiasts are freaking out. They’ve been protesting, pouting, and rallying all across America and now they’re even calling for ways to abort kids illegally – and get away with it.
In a May 24 letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, dozens of Democrats demanded that Google stop collecting location data so that women can abort their babies without getting in trouble, according to Insider.
42 Dems penned the plea where they claimed, “Google’s current practice of collecting and retaining extensive records of cell phone location data will allow it to become a tool for far-right extremists looking to crack down on people seeking reproductive health care.”
People who don’t support killing babies are “far-right extremists” apparently. Cool.
The letter indicates that lawmakers want Google to keep location private so that women who live in states where abortion is or becomes illegal can kill their babies without getting caught. It’s ironic that lawmakers want to help people break the law.
Mandleburg doesn’t mention the obvious: Information isn’t illegal and can’t be stopped from crossing state lines, and it’s perfectly legal for a woman to have an abortion in a state where it’s legal, even if the state she’s from has outlawed it. Again, Mandelburg doesn’t explain the structure or cost of the state surveillance apparatus that would be needed to monitor every woman in a state to make sure she’s not thinking about having an abortion — which would also, presumably, involve imprisoning or otherwise physically restraining a woman who wants to go to another state or is simply thinking about doing so — nor does she point to any court ruling that would legalize such a massive state surveillance apparatus.
A July 7 post by Catherine Salgado lamented that Google would not entertain the MRC’s surveillance state fantasies:
Following pressure from Democratic Party lawmakers and the liberal media, Google announced that it would make a new exception for retaining users’ location history—users visiting abortion clinics.
After the U.S. Supreme Court Dobbs v. Jackson decision that struck down Roe v. Wade, multiple tech companies and executives rushed to voice their support for baby killing. Google has now joined the ranks of pro-abortion businesses.
The Big Tech platform received considerable pressure from Democratic Party lawmakers, with 42 demanding that Google help those seeking illegal abortions by not collecting their location data.
14 senators and seven House lawmakers — all Democrats — also signed a letter to Google pressuring the company to remove crisis pregnancy clinics from abortion-related search results. Following such pressure, lo and behold, the platform announced that it will delete user location data for abortion clinic patients.
LIke Mandelburg, Salgado did not explain how this anti-abortion surveillance state would work, let alone how it would be legal given that how it would fly in the face of longstanding rulings upholding the freedom to travel, or why simply searching for information should be treated as a crime. Instead, she played whataboutism:
Google didn’t appear so concerned about user data privacy in the past. Free Speech Alliance member Project Veritas presented evidence in April alleging that Google had complied with secret government court orders and gave the government detailed private data from Project Veritas employees’ Gmail accounts.
Perhaps Project Veritas shouldn’t have been committing crimes if it didn’t want its communications to be surveilled.
Joseph Vazquez tried a different kind of whataboutism in a July 13 post:
Leftist outlets warning about potential data privacy infringements for those seeking abortions pushed for the surrender of people’s privacy when it came to COVID-19.
MRC Free Speech America found at least eight major publications that seemed to have respective major epiphanies on the importance of data privacy. Once the news broke that the U.S. Supreme Court would — and eventually did overturn the infamous pro-abortion Roe v. Wade( 1973) decision, liberal outlets like The Washington Post, The New York Times, BuzzFeed News and Fortune went into apparent shock and hypocritically warned about Big Tech’s threat to women’s abortion-related data privacy.
But these same outlets sang a different tune when it came to data privacy and contact tracing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Vasquez clearly doesn’t understand the difference between a medical procedure that is legal in many states and a communicable virus that is spread by close contact with people, thus making contact tracing a helpful to in prevention and treatment. And, like the others, Vazquez didn’t explain why a massive anti-abortion surveillance police state is needed (let alone legal) or why simply searching for information must be made a crime. Instead, he whined that one publication “sounded the Big Brother alarm for women seeking abortions” while refusing to explain why it wouldn’t be.
As much as the MRC whines about “big tech,” it knows it can be used to advance its policy objectives — like an anti-abortion surveillance state.