"If our systems identify that someone has visited one
of these places, we will delete these entries from Location History soon after
they visit," Jen Fitzpatrick, a senior vice president at Google, wrote in
a blog post. "This change will take effect in the coming weeks."
Other places from which Google will not store location data
include fertility centres, addiction treatment facilities, and weight loss
clinics.
The announcement comes a week after the US Supreme Court
made the tectonic decision to strip American women of constitutional rights to
abortion, leading a dozen states to ban or severely restrict the procedure and
prompting mass protests across the country.
Activists and politicians have been calling on Google and
other tech giants to limit the amount of information they collect to avoid it
being used by law enforcement for abortion investigations and prosecutions.
Fitzpatrick also sought to reassure users that the company
takes data privacy seriously.
"Google has a long track record of pushing back on
overly broad demands from law enforcement, including objecting to some demands
entirely," she wrote.
"We take into account the privacy and security
expectations of people using our products, and we notify people when we comply
with government demands."
Concerns over smartphone data and reproductive rights arose
even before the Supreme Court ruling, when several conservative US states in
recent months passed laws that give members of the public the right to sue
doctors who perform abortions — or anyone who helps facilitate them.
That led a group of top Democratic lawmakers in May to send
a letter to Google chief executive Sundar Pichai, asking him to stop collecting
smartphone location data lest it become "a tool for far-right extremists
looking to crack down on people seeking reproductive health care."
Ever since the SC ruling, there has been several
announcements by social media platforms to remove abortion-related data. With
abortion now or soon to be illegal in over a dozen states and severely
restricted in many more, Big Tech companies that vacuum up personal details of
their users are facing new calls to limit that tracking and surveillance. One
fear is that law enforcement or vigilantes could use those data troves against
people seeking ways to end unwanted pregnancies.
History has repeatedly demonstrated that whenever people's
personal data is tracked and stored, there's always a risk that it could be
misused or abused. With the Supreme Court's Friday overruling of the 1973 Roe
vs Wade decision that legalized abortion, collected location data, text
messages, search histories, emails and seemingly innocuous period and
ovulation-tracking apps could be used to prosecute people who seek an abortion
— or medical care for a miscarriage — as well as those who assist them.