Hanna Amanuel

HANNA AMANUEL, then a graduate student at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, was approved funding in September 2023 to aid research on “Digital Surveillance of Abortion Care,” supervised by Dr. Gabriella Coleman. The purpose of this project is to trace the shifting and ongoing processes of surveillance in the wake of intensifying pregnancy criminalization in the United States. The questions that orient the project are: how do routinized modes of digital surveillance feature in pregnancy criminalization? And how do clinicians in states with shield laws navigate cross-state surveillance processes? From tracking browser search histories to mining of clinic sites, people seeking obstetric care are subject to systems of everyday surveillance. While the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson ruling and the intensification of abortion bans raise the stakes of surveillance, state actors and corporations have long used surveillance tactics to exert control over poor, Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and other targeted communities. While the object of study is processes of reproductive surveillance, the grantee’s sites of observation are legal proceedings, telemedicine platforms, advocacy organizations, and reproductive health clinics. Within these spaces, the focus of the investigation is the relationships between people seeking and providing care across legal jurisdictions, data-collecting institutions and corporations, and state agencies.