It Could Happen Here - The Real Dangers of Abortion Under Trump

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

Mia talks with Kate Bertash, the executive director of the Digital Defense Fund, and Crystal, a reproductive health worker, about which of the myriad concerns set off by Trump's election are more valid than others and what people can do to avoid criminalization.  Sources:https://mahotline.org https://reprolegalhelpline.org https://digitaldefensefund.org/ddf-guides/abortion-privacy-top-3https://digitaldefensefund.org/ddf-guides/abortion-privacyhttps://ifwhenhow.org/resources/selfcare-criminalized/https://medium.com/@Kendra_Serra/fear-uncertainty-and-period-trackers-340ab8fdff74See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We want to speak out and we want this to stop. Wow, very powerful. I'm Ellie Flynn, an investigative journalist, and this is my journey deep into the adult entertainment industry. I really wanted to be a player boy, my doll. He was like, I'll take you to the top, I'll make you a star. To expose an alleged predator and the rotten industry he works in. It's honestly so much worse than I had anticipated.

We're an army in comparison to him. From Novel, listen to The Bunny Trap on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturne. Tales from the Shadow of the Sun. Join me, Danny Dre, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories

inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey everyone, it's John, also known as Dr. John Paul. And I'm Jordan or Joe Ho. And we are the BlackFatFilm Podcast. A podcast where all the intersections of identity are celebrated.

Woo chat, this year we have had some of our favorite people on including Kid Fury, T.S. Madison, Amber Ruffin from the Amber and Lacey Show, Angelicaasso and more. Make sure you listen to the Black Fat Fam podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, girl. Ooh, I know that's right. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid.

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Tune in and join the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline Podcast, and we're kicking off our second you get your podcasts from. Call Zone Media. Welcome to the I Could Happen Here, a podcast that is quite often about abortion in this country.

I'm your host, Mia Wong. Things have been very bad under the last administration and the administration before that and the administration before that and going back a long long time things have been not good. They've been steadily getting worse and there is a lot of fear and I think a lot of is very justified that things are going to get even worse under Trump. And to talk about what we need to be afraid of and what we don't is Kate Bertash, who's the executive director of the Digital Defense Fund, and also Crystal,

who's an abortion worker and also a volunteer for abortion hotlines. So both of you two, welcome to the show. Excellent. Thanks for having us on. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Yeah. I'm really excited to talk to you both. And I'm also excited to let Kate talk a little bit about what the Digital Defense Fund is. Excellent. Thanks so much. Longtime listener, first time caller, I suppose. So the Digital Defense Fund is an organization that's been around for actually since the last election.

It was started in response to Trump winning for the first time. And we're an organization that was put together to provide free digital security and technology resources for the front lines of what then was just the abortion access movement. We've since moved to support other variety of autonomy and liberation movements, but we provide free digital security evaluations, trainings, we do a lot of project management work to help people set up what they'd like to change about their systems and security. And we also help people pay for it, which is a really wonderful way to get to kind of see through our values.

So I'm excited to be on here today to talk a little bit more about the implications for both organizations and individuals. The very first wave impact of this election has been a lot of fear about what's coming. And I wanted to, I guess, ask you about what kinds of fears you've been seeing and maybe talk a little bit about which ones are more justified than others. Because I think there's been some concern that I think is justified and is good. And there's also been some stuff that is not rooted in what the threats are. Yeah. I think it's a great time anytime this happens to sort of get to ask and answer the

question which is like, how do we know? And I think we're sort of lucky in this way that we know what are likely to be risks now to both people who are seeking abortions as well as people who help them get there folks as well like Crystal, who I know will provide some additional color to this as well. But we know what kind of threats face people facing abortions and those who help them because unfortunately a lot of these threats have been happening for the last several decades. People have been prosecuted for suspicion of ending their own pregnancies. We get a lot of really incredible and insightful data from organizations like If, How, who put out these reports that are called Self-Care Criminalized.

And they look backwards across all of the different cases that have happened in this space and try to come up with sort of like these key aspects. And one of the big things that we know that I'm sure we're going to talk about a lot through this episode is that the core way that people come to the attention of law enforcement for seeking to allegedly end their own pregnancies is through usually someone they know reporting them or someone responsible for their care. So that might be like healthcare workers, social worker, other representative agents of the state. And it can be really devastating to kind of hear and I think internalize that it's often people's family members like ex or friend's neighbor who might turn somebody in expecting or misunderstanding

that it is a crime to end your own pregnancy. I think one of the things that's really hard about this is that it involves some of the ways in which, I guess it's what you would call very unfortunately typical policing practices, the way in which people's rights are violated when they are interrogated, when they are pressured into disclosing information. There's something called consent search that it unfortunately ends up being a very common feature of these kinds of cases, which is where you're put in a room and you're talking to a representative agent in the state or a police officer, and they sort of pressure you into agreeing to unlock and disclose often your phone and other device or to otherwise share information, quote unquote, voluntarily. And it's easy to see why people kind

of get pressured into that. So that is something that tends to happen in many kinds of prosecutions of crimes or alleged crimes. And I think it's hard for a lot of people to imagine what that's like to be pulled over and searched in this way, or they're often like people are not the targeted victims of something like stop and frisk. And so it's sort of hard to imagine in your mind the way in which somebody's information or their data or their case comes to the attention of law enforcement. And so we like tend to then imagine these other threats that feel perhaps closer to our daily experience, especially as like often people who are not racially targeted by police, who are not targeted by the family policing system or have their pregnancies surveilled

by the hospital systems. So people like to imagine then that I think a big one that we all hear and I think we're all going to take a deep breath at the same time is period tracking apps. Yeah, I thought it was kind of remarkable. we're all going to take a deep breath at the same time is period tracking apps. Yeah. I thought it was kind of remarkable. As Crystal, I'm sure you hear this too. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And I would love to at least space Crystal for you to add any context to sort of like the threats that are present versus stuff that people imagine. So I know we're going to spend a lot of time talking about our friend, the period tracker. Yeah. So at the time of recording, it's been about almost a month since election day. And I answer the phones for a couple of different places for both work and volunteering.

And there's been a lot of fear. And not saying that abortion access has been without fear up until this point, but people are very afraid. I'm getting a lot of questions about people asking, can I be arrested for giving you my information, sending in my ID, giving you my real name, ordering medication online? Can the United States get my records if I order from this provider overseas such as women on web and Just yeah people asking like can I be arrested? You know, can I do this? Will I be in trouble and It is something that is going we're going to see an increase in criminalization an increase in abortion bans

It is a complicated answer. You know, the straight of it is that yet you can access abortion medication online even if you're in a banned state. Even if you're in a state with a total abortion ban, you can order the medication from reliable resources online and have it mailed to you. People do this every day. Hundreds and hundreds of people do this every day without any issue. But there is also risk. And it's kind of like what Kate was saying, where people tend to, it seems like people don't know what the risk has been

or what it looks like. Because like Kate was saying, there's like all been all these years of pregnancy criminalization. And we know what it looks like. And it tends to not be what people are worrying about right now, where people seem to be thinking like that the police are going to Come and arrest them for putting in this order along with hundreds of other people in a given day

Or that the the police are somehow going to get the their period tracker information on their on their phone and you know, like of course, you know Practical social security in a way that makes you feel comfortable Like if you don't want to use a period tracking app, you know There are safer ones to use or you don't want to use a period tracking app, there are safer ones to use, or you don't have to use it. But the fact of the matter is, is that even if you are using pen and paper to record your period,

if you have an abusive partner, they're going to be able to take pictures and collaborate with police. So the biggest threats are always, as the data has shown, like Kate was saying, going to be health care workers and the people that you know, such as partners, family members, neighbors, friends, et cetera, who are going to get access to pictures, screenshots, and of course, the police and warrants.

It's not going to look like the Handmaid's Tale, where somebody is coming in and going and forcing you to do something and dress a certain way or etc It's not going to be like anything new and fancy. It's going to be the same old police surveillance and criminalization that we've been seeing but There are ways in which we can protect ourselves when we're doing that when somebody calls and they ask me can I get in trouble for ordering this medication online and People can get really in trouble for ordering this medication online? And people can get really in trouble for anything.

In the United States, if the police want to go after you for something, they're going to find something. So you just have to not leave evidence. So yeah, you can order the medication online. But you can also use Signal. And I know that Kate's probably going to go more into this. But you can make sure you have disappearing messages. You can use encrypted emails and search engines. You have to make sure you have disappearing messages. You can use encrypted emails and search

engines. You have to make sure you're thinking about who can see your data and where your data is being recorded. And that's really... If you want to protect yourself in terms of avoiding criminalization for abortion and pregnancy outcomes and having a secure and safe abortion in the United States, then you have to look at the basics like this. And I'm gonna let Kate talk about that a little bit more because I know that you have all the good information that the Digital Defense Fund has looked into

about the apps and then how to delete data and what data to delete and how to think about this. Yeah, I think one of the really tough things, right, is that like, so like neither I or Crystal are attorneys. But often people are just getting a lot of advice from attorneys. And some of our work here is to make sure that like when you get sort of this idea of when something might be criminalized or often like in this circumstance where we just like

don't know actually how it's going to show up a lot yet. We're trying to think about sort of what are the ways we can have our digital devices and our technology sort of support us with these by default type of settings. One of the things that's really tough to, I think, understand until you've been through it is sort of like what it looks like when you go through any kind of investigation. I think the other hard kind of like context to get from the way we talk about it now is that a lot of how pregnancy is criminalized, that sort of scaffolding, that infrastructure was built during the drug war.

So one of the most common kinds of pregnancy criminalization in America is drug testing people who are pregnant or come to give birth without their consent. And so we basically consider like being an alleged drug user to be the sort of like primary way that our decision of like how much the digital evidence matters has like kind of come to take shape. So often when an investigation is happening, the police will look for where are all the sources of information I can find about this because like the human body is like not super compliant with like digital forensic evidence,

evidentiary processes. I think it's one of the most magical things about humans is that our bodies defy the letter of law in so many wonderful ways. But that means that they have to then go to this digital body of evidence to tell the story or as all the wonderful lawyers that advise us to say, to be able to draw the dots or the lines between the dots, and form this kind of coherent set of facts of what happened between one moment to the next. Often when we're imagining all of the data that lives in our phone, because unfortunately

in many cases when you are perhaps coerced into consenting to a search of a device, they will often take your phone and then have you unlock it. It gets plugged into a device that makes clone of the entire drive. And then they can sort of with many different techniques kind of leisurely look through it for keywords to kind of tell where there might be evidence somewhere on your phone that you, for example, went on the internet search for and purchased abortion medication. So yes, like period tracking data might be one portion of that, but unfortunately in

all the cases that we've seen, or at least in most of the ones that we're most familiar with, all of that quote unquote plain text data, so where you've just written out in your own unencrypted words into a search bar in the search engine on your phone, or you've sent a text message to a very close contact with somebody telling them how you feel about your pregnancy, that you desire to end it, perhaps your plan to buy pills, even the receipt that comes into your inbox. It's not necessary then to go to all these companies

and go file for a warrant and get all that information because now it's in just plain text, quote unquote, on your phone. And that is far more information than the like abstract information that might come out of a period tracker. So unfortunately, cops don't tend to use these in cases that we've seen because it's quite simply not necessary. That kind of like plain text admission of your state of mind or the statement of your intent has unfortunately been the sort of core evidence that comes up. And I think this has like a lot of like really quite sad implications, I know, in prior to prepare for this episode, we were discussing a couple of cases that I know

folks might be more familiar with. A big one that came up is, you know, the case of a mother and daughter out of Nebraska, who were having a discussion around allegedly helping the daughter to find an end for her pregnancy over Metta's Facebook Messenger. And I think what I find really quite devastating about it for many reasons is that these messages were actually ones that I think any of us could hope to have with a very supportive parent or other person in our life is why

we have these conversations so that we can like feel connected and supported through such a complex and affecting process. It then becomes very sad to me that it becomes a criminal matter just because it was in a place that that conversation, you know, meta did not have this family's back in terms of encrypting those messages or ensuring that they were free to speak of what they wish when they wish by default. So I think like when we start to give out advice, it's been important for us at Digital Defense Fund to kind of work backwards.

I know it's been an existential crisis, I think, for everybody in the digital security space to know that the list of advice I could give you on how to protect yourself when going through these transactions or when seeking support or just having normal questions and going on the internet and being able to Google them and get them answered. We had to kind of like start from the basics because like you have the right to find information from reliable resources. You have the right to buy pills from a reliable source. You have the right to like seek that kind of connection and support

from people in your life. And so we're trying to cut down on like all the infinite amount of advice that we could give and try to like narrow it to like what is actionable, what has the greatest impact potentially in the cases we've seen. And I know we're going to dig into it, but I would love to leave room to talk a little bit more about that whenever it's a good time in this conversation to go through our top three action items. Before we get to that, unfortunately, we are under capitalism, which means we have to do these ads. We will be back shortly. We want to speak out, we want to raise awareness and we want this to stop.

Wow. Very powerful. I'm Ellie Flynn and I'm an investigative journalist. When a group of models from the UK wanted my help, I went on a journey deep into the heart of the adult entertainment industry. I really wanted to be a playboy model. Lingerie, topless.

I said, yes, please. Because at the centre of this murky world is an alleged predator. You know who he is because of his pattern of behavior? He's just spinning the web for you to get trapped in it. He's everywhere and has been everywhere. It's so much worse and so much more widespread than I had anticipated. Together, we're going to expose him

and the rotten industry he works in. It's not just me. We're an army in comparison to him. Listen to the bunny trap on the I Heart Rock show Together, we're going to expose him and the rotten industry he works in. It's not just me. We're an army in comparison to him. Listen to The Bunny Trap on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows presented by I Heart and Sonora An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America From ghastly encounters with shape-shifters... ...to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

No! Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturne Tales from the Shadows as part of my Kultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, it's John, also known as Dr. John Paul. And I'm Jordan, or Joe Ho. and we are the black fat film podcast a Podcast where all the intersections of identity are celebrated. Oh chat this year We have had some of our favorite people on including Kid Fury T.s

Madison Amber Ruffin from the Amber and Lacey show and Jella Carras and more Make sure you listen to the black fat fan podcast on the iHeartRadio app, other podcasts or whatever you get your podcast girl. Oh, I know that's right. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson-Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships,

and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating.

I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot.

Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend, and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommates' toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house.

So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. And we are back. Another lawsuit, this is a little different because it's not a criminal charge, it was a lawsuit in Texas. And I want to bring up just as an example of like how our data can betray us in these moments.

Is there was, and this was a really silly lawsuit, it has been dismissed, but there was a Texas man who filed a wrongful death lawsuit accusing three women of helping his ex-wife obtain abortion pills. I believe, I think it was dismissed last year or maybe it was earlier this year. It wasn't even under the aid and eved in law in Texas. It was actually, you know, they sought a different avenue. There actually hasn't been a successful lawsuit against an abortion seeker under aid and a vet law

or any other law in Texas in the last two years, which I think is just something worth bringing up is that we actually haven't seen that happen yet other than this case. But what happened in this case is this person was planning on terminating their pregnancy. They were talking to some friends who were helping them out and their iPhone was synced up to their iPad.

So if anyone's familiar with that, you can have your iMessages appear on both devices. The iMessages that are coming to your phone are also going to be going to your iPad. And her ex-husband took pictures of the iMessages coming through on her iPad and that was what was used. Even though the lawsuit was dismissed because it was a very silly lawsuit, total waste of time. But that is the kind of thing that you really need to be asking yourself is, where are my messages going?

Who is seeing my messages? Who is seeing my messages? Who is seeing my emails? What is it connected to? Yeah, because it can just look like that too. I would say that's exactly right. I think I had a good friend who works in another area of security who, and this is like how we learn these things, right? Is that folks who work in the parts of security that deal with, for example, intimate partner violence or the sort of quote unquote in-household surveillance threat model, I think is vastly underestimated. I can't recall the figures at the moment, but one of those more recent reports from If One How actually had detailed just how frequently actually that sort of like how

it is also this like intimate partner violence situation that comes up also in a pregnancy or abortion criminalization case. And so, you know, this person challenged me to think about the exact threat model of the unlocked iPad on the family coffee table and thinking about like when we share information and we share devices, kind of like, where does it go? So like actually our first piece of recommendation that we often give is it can sound deceptively simple and it doesn't sound technical at all,

but it is to think about like who you are telling about your experience and about like, you know, your abortion or wanting to have an abortion and then understand whether you've like been clear about your boundaries. Like, do you expect them to not share or tell with others? Like, can you delete any messages with them? Would they ask, if you asked them after the fact

to delete things for you, would they absolutely do that? I think it can be really challenging to kind of like zoom out and realize, it's often not as easy as it sounds to kind of do this mental inventory and think about all the different ways that like me and my best friend talk. Or when I mention things to people offhand, we don't have a really good, I think, social practice of understanding the implication of sharing other people's information without their permission. And so it's very impactful, but also very difficult, and it can't be very individual for all of us to think more carefully about with whom we share things and how we ask people to keep our confidence

and how we can even offer each other the ability to delete things that we don't want to exist indefinitely. I think one of the biggest existential struggles that crosses over to where people get support for abortions from organizations also includes the fact that I know has been discussed many times on this podcast that there is a difference in how much information is kept depending on where you were having a conversation on your phone. So an SMS text message, those little green bubbles that go back and forth between you and possibly other people who are on iOS, iOS and Android combination conversation, your friends with an Android might have a green bubble come back to you.

That basically means that that is going as an SMS text message to your phone carrier. And that means that it's going quote unquote in plain text, totally unencrypted to the cell tower. And it's being held by that phone carrier, unencrypted, readable as it is, as you typed it in, as far as we know forever. It can vary depending on whether or not you move to a different carrier, but unfortunately phone carriers have a very long history also of disclosing that information readily on request, either from law enforcement or from other agencies. And I think that is troubling. I think like no person would really like to know that regardless of what you intend to do with your text messages. But it's why we often then encourage people as like sort of a second step to try and use encrypted chat

with Signal or another trusted end-to-end encrypted chat. Again, sounds overly simplistic, but I think having those disappearing messages on, especially between people who are seeking support from one another, whether it's somebody in your life or another organization that's helping you to get your abortion, there really is something to that ability to again speak freely, to be best friends,

helping your friends allegedly get abortion medication or to being a mom there to support your child, no matter what. I think it's just something really wonderful about how using disappearing messages with Signal reflects the values that we actually have already with each other and just like make sure that technology companies or corporations

or law enforcement don't get to get in the way of how we want to live our lives. So yeah. Yeah. So really supporting somebody through an abortion includes digital security. Yes. Same with providers, people who are answering the phones. Digital security is one of the number one priorities. And yeah, if you're supporting somebody with an abortion, that should be your number one

priority as well. Well, and like, I bet people like, you know, when you talk to people, like, you're often I imagine, one of the first people that they're expressing themselves to at all about what they're going through. And, you know, I know that the point is to help people get to their procedure, but often they're bringing a lot of other things with them. And they're not sure if they're important. I remember like you mentioning this, but just the amount of weight that is for y'all as a sport too. Yeah. And people are scared for good reason. We do live in a fascist country and a police surveillance

state. So their fears are founded. But there are a lot of excellent resources. They're not alone. You and I know this, Kate, but there are so many people who've got the back of everyone who needs an abortion. You may not know the safe way of going about it, but there are people who are committed to digital security and safety, and you're

avoiding criminalization. So part of the service is also reassuring people of that too, that it is possible to have a safe abortion, even still. We want to speak out, we want to raise awareness, and we want this to stop. Wow, very powerful. I'm Ellie Flynn, and I'm an investigative journalist. When a group of models from the UK wanted my help, I went on a journey deep into the heart of the adult entertainment industry. I really wanted to be a playboy model.

Lingerie, topless. I said, yes, please. Because at the center of this murky world is an alleged predator. You know who he is because of his pattern of behavior. He's just spinning the web for you to get trapped in it. He's everywhere and has been everywhere. It's so much worse and so much more widespread than I had anticipated.

Together, we're going to expose him and the rotten industry he works in. It's not just me. We're an army in comparison to him. Listen to The Bunny Trap on the iHeartRad app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter. Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters... ...to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. No. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturne Tales from the Shadows as part of Michael Tura podcast network available on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey everyone, it's John also known as Dr. John Paul and I'm Jordan or Joe Ho and we are the BlackFatFilm podcast.

A podcast where all the intersections of identity are celebrated. Oh, chat, this year we have had some of our favorite people on including Kid Fury, T.S. Madison, Amber Ruffin from the Amber and Lacey Show, Angela Carrasso and more. Make sure you listen to the BlackFatFilm Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or whatever you get your podcast girl. Ooh, I know that's right. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?

Hit play on the sex positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeart Radio

app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko.

It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples

of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommates' toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head

and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. The next thing that I know that we were talking about, Kate, It's the one with the green guy on it. The next thing that I know that we were talking about, Kate, in terms of really practical, what you can do now to protect yourself, is having a plan for when you need to go get healthcare

and you have to interface with a medical team, a medical site, such as an ER, a clinic, an OBGYN, a doctor of any kind Because I think I believe the number one source of Criminalization like who's reporting who who is criminal like who's calling the police who's reporting these and giving over The information is often health care worker. I believe that is the number one source

So, you know you do that is something to keep me to I am a health care worker? I believe that is the number one source So, you know you do that is something to keep me know. I am a health care worker, but it's just it's just a fact That that's something that we all need to be mindful of and as a patient somebody seeking health care It's completely appropriate to be thinking of your own security and your safety when when you're if you need to access health care So, you know one thing is that luckily abortion is very safe and very effective And if you don't feel comfortable going to an ER for very good reasons There are many good reasons to not want to go to ER including cost including your safety and security the chance of criminalization There is a free medical resource and a free legal resource

that you can call. I'm going to talk about the medical resource first. There is the miscarriage and abortion hotline or mahotline.org, but you can call and get some feedback from a doctor about, hey, do I even need to go to the ER? Is this normal? Is something wrong? You actually can run that by a safe person Before just going to the ER and that's like one example of like having a plan, you know, like okay I think I might need to go to the er You know, let me check with a trusted resource Let me check with the miscarriage and abortion hotline if I can get some feedback on what's going on with some of my symptoms And you know, it's like this extra kind of added support that you can access as a pregnant person or

if you're having a miscarriage, if you're having an abortion, to assess your risk and to see if you can avoid even going to a medical site, given that going to an emergency room in a banned state is something that does increase your risk of criminalization. Yes, and I think it was from our peers at M&A Hotline, and then I know the other hotline that, if you have questions also, the Repro Legal Hotline is a wonderful resource that I know

in all the show notes will include these. We try to include along with the miscarriage and abortion hotline. So you have folks you can call who are professionals to ask about medical questions. You have folks you can call who can answer questions about legal questions about your abortion or pregnancy experience.

I know that it's really hard because often when folks are in a hospital setting, we're sort of socialized to disclose everything. We want to tell our doctor what's wrong and tell them everything we took. You worry it might be relevant, but I was reassured, I think, by many other professionals in this space that doctors treat based on the symptoms that you present with, regardless of how they got there. You might be in a position where you don't know. So if you just tell folks what's going on with your body, what you are seeing, what you're feeling and experiencing, it is their job to treat

you regardless of what you choose to share. And I would say that that's actually true regardless of what healthcare condition you come into the ER with. It is your right to only disclose as much as you feel safe doing so. So I think that was something that I know, again, we're not used to thinking about that as a digital security measure, but it is an information security measure and I think an operational security measure that we've had to then realize that that's actually probably almost more important to tell people before we start getting into this nitty gritty of things to do with your phone is to understand that those principles that we believe that, you know, the human, again, the human body is very varied in how it experiences something like pregnancy, miscarriage,

and abortion. And that, you know, folks have a responsibility to treat you regardless of, you know, what's in your phone or what happened before that, or this like statement of facts that are relevant to a courtroom and not to your care. So, yeah. Do you two have anything else you want to make sure the audience knows before we head out? Yeah, just kind of like one more piece. It's kind of our last piece of the puzzle. Um, so, you know, just to reiterate, cause I know it's

good to hear things repeated again, you know, with the actual kind of pregnancy criminalization, digital security advice, we talk about understanding who you're disclosing stuff to, making sure they are clear on your expectations. Try to, if you can have conversations with them in a secure place or a private place, like signal with disappearing messages on. For our second item, we're going to make a plan for if we need to get care after the

fact and ensure that we're trying to, again, have our support people also understand that, you know, doctors treat you based on the symptoms you present with. That is, you don't have to tell them anything that you do not wish to disclose. And the third thing is that something that I think as digital security practitioners, we kind of forget is super important, which is that I think I run into this conflict where as experts or smart people,

we try to imagine in our mind how we would have this perfectly footprint free abortion. This use signal, use Tor, use Bitcoin, kind of like a strange way of architecting privacy in our mind. And I call it the ghost abortion, that it's a myth. You can't have one. There's no such thing as an abortion

that leaves no footprint. But I think we forget then that it actually is super meaningful to delete what's within our power to delete. So our third recommendation for folks is to be aware of what's collected and then ensure that you know that you can delete your browser history, you can delete your Google Maps history from driving to the clinic, you can delete your emails, you can delete messages on certain platforms. And I think just understanding that deleting what you can is actually super meaningful.

I actually didn't know until I got this job that certain platforms, like even Google products, like if you delete something from it, it is purged from the servers, like something like two and a half months later. So when you delete stuff, it's very meaningful. I think there you get more options than ever to decide like how long you want to keep something. And it does make it so that that primary thing we talked about,

like if somebody were to take my phone from me and to like, you know, make a clone of it and try to look through it, at least it's deleted. That copy is no longer on my device, even if they would have to go to like, you know, get a warrant later. That is still great. It still gives me and my counsel time to respond and also allows me to access my right to do process.

And I think so like these are like these three simple things I know that we'll give to Link, that our guide that kind of puts this all in a row in very plain language. We also have a Spanish language guide for it as well. But just to know that these things are within our power. I think it's really easy to get tangled up in the idea of abstract data and things that are really tough for us to always know when they're generated, like ad tracker data or who is reselling or doing something with my period tracking apps. There are great options that are local only to your phone, like Yu-Ki app if you are concerned about that.

Other apps, seeing whether or not they use best practices security, if they've responded and said how they would respond to a legal request, that's awesome. I think that just sort of taking that uncertainty away is great because tracking your period is really important. As Crystal would tell you, it is an essential way that you're going to know how pregnant you are and find the option that's safest for your circumstances. So yeah, with that, I'll pass to Crystal for anything else you think our folks should know before we depart. Yeah. Tracking your period is important because if you don't know what's going on with your period and you get pregnant, it can delay your care.

what's going on with your period and you get pregnant, it can delay your care. And optimally, you're getting the safest, quickest, most comfortable care for you. So it's really good to track that. I use Yu-Ki. What I love about Yu-Ki is that it has a passcode and it stores everything locally and you can set to auto delete your data. And I love all of those things. And I don't like using my paper calendar. If you love using your paper calendar, go use your paper calendar, whatever you want to do. But it is very important to know when your last period was because it can just make your

care more timely. And that's really important given the abortion restrictions and the abortion bans. Now we are only, you know, admittedly, they're going to get worse. This is going to get less safe. There's going to be greater risk of criminalization. So when people call and they ask, like, can I access pills? Yes, you can. You know, no matter what Trump does, you're going to be able to get abortion pills. There are countries all over the world that have total abortion bans and they use abortion pills all the time.

It's not new in America. But you do have to have a digital security plan while you're doing that. So yes, you can order pills online, but yes, also have a digital security plan and keep this stuff in mind. It's part of your, part of your healthcare plan now. Yeah, because you have the right to use safe, accessible, common sense, like amazing technology products to actually obtain the abortion that you want. We really, really do believe that like that part of autonomy, it includes digital autonomy, as well as bodily autonomy. They're all part and parcel, you can't have one without the other.

So thanks for having us on. Yeah, thanks, Mia. Yeah, and I want to close with one more thing that is is related to this, but is also more general advice. Don't talk to cops. Oh, God. You know, I think that the common thing people say is it is legal for them to lie to you. And that is true. But it's not just as legal for them to lie to you.

It is their job to lie to you. And that is true, but it's not just that it's legal for them to lie to you. It is their job to lie to you. You cannot trust a single word that comes out of their mouths because it is their job to get you to confess to a crime or to get information out of you that'll let you confess to a crime. So invoke your right to remain silent, get a fucking lawyer, don't talk to them. And you know, this is advice,

it's not just coming from me, right? Like this is the advice you will get from every single person who does any kind of offense. This is what you'll get from a public defender. This is what you'll get from anyone who has even sort of interacted with the legal system. And this is also true even if they tell you that, oh, you're not a suspect. You're just blah, blah, blah. We're trying to get information. It is their job to lie to you.

Think about it roughly the same way of like, if you're dealing with like a country secret police, how much information would you give them? The answer is do not, simply do not do this. Exactly, and you know, no, no matter what, that there are people again, like Crystal Sahuba support you. There are amazing teams across the United States

from medical support to legal support were there for you. And they would all, I think, wholeheartedly endorse as do we, yes, please do not talk to cops. And that's a great note to end on. Yeah. Yeah, well, thank you to you both for coming on. And may we live to see a world better than this one where you could just do this stuff and not have to have any concerns.

Yes, one day. But until then, we can do this very securely. Yes, we got our own backs. We can do this together. Thanks for having us on. If Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. We want to speak out and we want this to stop. Wow, very powerful. I'm Ellie Flynn, an investigative journalist and this is my journey deep into the adult entertainment industry. I really wanted to be a player boy, my doll. He was like, I'll take you to the top. I'll make you a star. To expose an alleged predator and the rotten industry he works in. It's honestly so much worse than I had anticipated. We're an army in comparison to him.

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