(Originally published by The Hill on July 1, 2022) 

On June 24, the Supreme Court officially overturned Roe v. Wade, taking away the formal legal right to an abortion that it had previously declared in 1973. According to the Guttmacher Institute, following the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 26 states immediately banned abortion or are likely to do so soon. While there has been much discussion about how investigators in those states will leverage digital data against people suspected of having or performing abortions, one startling fact has gone unnoticed: The federal government is poised to lend those states a hand.

(Continue reading the opinion essay on The Hill’s page here.)