Digital dictatorship and censoring abortion

The 'pro-life' plan for a digital dystopia

May 06, 2025

☆This post is Part I in a series examining the anti-choice movement’s efforts and actions to censor information about abortion and abortion services.

Imagine opening your internet browser, searching the word “abortion,” and receiving zero search results. You had recently heard of an anti-choice state banning access to online information about abortion, but you weren't worried about it affecting you. You live in a pro-choice state, after all. As you repeat your search attempts to no prevail, it occurs to you that the internet is the same internet in every state. Your access to information about abortion has been cut off, too.

Or perhaps, instead of receiving search results for abortion, the only results you get are adoption baby brokers and big retailers selling maternity clothes and baby supplies; or anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers and anti-abortion websites replete with misinformation. Factual information about abortion and abortion services has been purged.

Anti-choicers are actively trying to make these dystopian hypotheticals into a reality.

Opponents of sexual and reproductive health and human rights (SRHR) are already notorious for collecting and sharing vast amounts of pregnant people’s private information; for using various technologies for mass digital surveillance; for lying about their privacy policies, falsely telling pregnant people who visit anti-abortion pregnancy centers that their personal health information is protected by HIPAA when it is not; for serious data breaches; and for creepily tracking people’s locations. Now, the anti-choice movement is attempting to institute vast online censorship. In so doing, the movement has fully embraced digital dictatorship, also known as digital authoritarianism and techno-authoritarianism.

Support rePro-Truth with a direct gift

“Censorship is an act of control, driven by a combustible mix of power, privilege, and fear.”1 Furthermore, “most attempts at suppression rest on a denial of the fundamental premise of democracy” (emphasis added).2

Censorship practices under digital dictatorship “can be carried out by governments, corporations, or other institutions for various reasons, such as maintaining political control [] or enforcing social norms.”3 This means blocking or otherwise stopping citizens from accessing “online content that is deemed threatening to the regime's power.”4

“Thirty-four countries restrict the dissemination of information about abortion and abortion services, even when abortions may be legal in some circumstances.”5 In 24 of these countries, “the offences and penalties are contained in the general penal code. In 13 countries (this includes some countries where the penal code also has restrictions on information), it is found in a different legal instrument,” such as public health laws and laws on advertising.6

In the United States, the right to receive information - to access information - is a fundamental right protected under the U.S. Constitution.7 Yet, anti-choicers are so Hell-bent on keeping people from accessing accurate information about abortion and keeping pregnant folks from accessing the resources and help they seek in order to get the care they need, that anti-choicers are willing and eager to run a blitzkrieg against the rights of every single American.

Let's look at a couple of examples.

“[T]he right to receive ideas is a necessary predicate to the recipient’s meaningful exercise of his own rights of speech, press, and political freedom.”

Board of Education v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982)

Consider a resent example: Texas's Senate Bill 2880.

Last week, the Texas Senate passed a diluted, 30-page final version of SB 2880, the Woman and Child Protection Act, a new bounty hunter bill prohibiting any abortion-inducing drugs (such as mifepristone, misoprostol, and methotrexate) from being made or distributed in Texas. While the original bill was a whopping 43-pages, the engrossed bill is just 30 pages in length. In Texas, engrossed refers to “the stage in a bill's legislative progress when it has been passed by the chamber in which it was filed and all amendments to the bill have been incorporated into the text of the bill, which is then forwarded to the second house for consideration.”

The Legislative Process in Texas (https://tlc.texas.gov/docs/legref/legislativeprocess.pdf)

The bill is designed to isolate pregnant Texans; limit the treatment of miscarriages; financially strain drug manufacturers; enrich litigious citizens; punish judges with large fines; and frighten away those who may consider challenging the law in court. It also allows every Billy Bob and Joe Shmo to possess an abortion-inducing drug “for purposes of entrapping a person [who] violates” the law. *The Dallas Morning News has a helpful breakdown of the bill.

As bad as this is, the original version of the bill was far worse.

Even though it appears that the original version did not pass, it shows us the dictatorial direction and goals of the anti-choice movement in the digital sphere.

The original version of SB 2880, a 43-page behemoth introduced in the Texas Senate by Republican state Senator Bryan Hughes, would usher in the hypothetical dystopia imagined at the start of this post. It would have made it illegal to “provide information on the method for obtaining an abortion-inducing drug”; “create, edit, upload, publish, host, maintain, or register a domain name for an Internet website, platform, or other interactive computer service that assists or facilitates a person ’s effort in obtaining an abortion-inducing drug”; “create, edit, program, or distribute any application or software for use on a computer or an electronic device that is intended to enable individuals to obtain an abortion-inducing drug or to facilitate an individual ’s access to an abortion-inducing drug”; “engage in conduct that aids or abets”; and more.

Merely linking to resources for abortion (LIKE THESE👇) would put rePro-Truth at risk of being sued into financial ruin.

In an analysis titled, “Texas’s War on Abortion Is Now a War on Free Speech,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation explained:

Senate Bill (S.B.) 2880* seeks to prevent the sale and distribution of abortion pills—but it doesn’t stop there. By restricting access to certain information online, the bill tries to keep people from learning about abortion drugs, or even knowing that they exist.
If passed, S.B. 2880 would make it illegal to “provide information” on how to obtain an abortion-inducing drug. If you exchange e-mails or have an online chat about seeking an abortion, you could violate the bill. If you create a website that shares information about legal abortion services in other states, you could violate the bill. Even your social media posts could put you at risk.
On top of going after online speakers who create and post content themselves, the bill also targets social media platforms, websites, email services, messaging apps, and any other “interactive computer service” simply for hosting or making that content available.
In other words, Texas legislators not only want to make sure no one can start a discussion on these topics, they also want to make sure no one can find one. The goal is to wipe this information from the internet altogether. That creates glaring free-speech issues with this bill and, if passed, the consequences would be dire.

The bill was championed by anti-choice groups, including anti-abortion pregnancy centers and Texas Right to Life. “No other state has enacted effective legislation to save mothers and children from the abortion industry’s evil new business model,” crowed Kimberlyn Schwartz, Director of Media and Communication at Texas Right to Life.8

The dictatorial bill, with its vast censorship scheme and bounty hunter enforcement mechanism, was in tended to be a model bill for the rest of the country. “If passed, the state will become the first to attack [the] developing underground abortion industry—setting a powerful example for the rest of the nation to follow,” Schwartz said.9

Join the fight for reproductive freedom

“The dissemination of ideas can accomplish nothing if otherwise willing addressees are not free to receive and consider them. It would be a barren marketplace of ideas that had only sellers and no buyers.”

Justice William Brennan, Lamont v. Postmaster General, 381 U.S. 301 (1965).

Consider another recent example: ReproductiveRights.gov

In the hours following Donald Trump’s 2025 presidential inauguration, his administration shut down reproductiverights.gov, a goverment website containing information about reproductive healthcare and rights (archived here).

“The site affirmed that most employer-based health plans and private health insurance plans are required to cover certain prescription birth control methods under the Affordable Care Act, which Trump has made calls to repeal. It also displayed a list of other services covered by most insurance plans, including breast and cervical cancer screenings, prenatal care and HIV screenings.”10

It also contained accurate information about mifepristone. “The site reiterated that while abortion legality varies by state, Mifepristone, in a regimen with misoprostol — otherwise known as a medication abortion — has been approved by the FDA and is safe and effective when used correctly.”11

The site has never been restored.

Anti-choice activists are now lobbying Congress to create a government anti-choice replacement, which will no doubt push adoption on vulnerable pregnant people, steer the public towards anti-choice disinformation on various aspects of reproductive healthcare, lack vital information on American’s reproductive rights, and contribute even more of the public's personal information into Big Data's collection. According to anti-choice groups, several bills to make this happen are already in the works.

This type of digital dictatorship and censorship “limits the development of a critical and informed society.”12 When citizens are denied access to important information, “they are not able to fully understand and engage with important issues that affect their lives and communities. This lack of information and critical thinking ultimately leads to a population that is easily controlled and manipulated by the regime.”13

“A popular government, without popular information, or the mean of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

James Madison

So, does the anti-choice movement’s full embrace of digital dictatorship, most visible in its efforts to censor information, tell us anything important about the movement itself? Yes!

When we examine the anti-abortion censorship actions and efforts, such as those discussed in this post, we learn a great deal.— This is especially so when we are position these actions and efforts within the tenets and patterns of censorship movements historically.

Scholars have identified several historical tenets of censorship that provide insight into the anti-abortion movement, its activists, and its adherents. We'll delve into this topic in the next post. ■

rePro-Truth

Digital dictatorship and censoring abortion

The 'pro-life' plan for a digital dystopia

☆This post is Part I in a series examining the anti-choice movement’s efforts and actions to censor information about abortion and abortion services.

Consider a resent example: Texas's Senate Bill 2880.

Consider another recent example: ReproductiveRights.gov

Discussion about this post