Texas cops are hunting down women

Well, we knew it was only a matter of time: Texas cops tried to find an abortion patient by using data from an automatic license plate reader (ALPR), which gave them access to over 83,000 cameras across the country.

404 Media reports that Johnson County Sheriff’s Office spent over a month looking for a woman they believed self-managed an abortion—under the guise of ‘protecting’ her, of course. Sheriff Adam King told reporters that the search “was about her safety,” and that they weren’t trying “to block her from leaving the state or whatever.”

Abortion, Every Day first flagged the danger of ALPRs back in 2023, when I shared a report from the STOP (Surveillance Technology Oversight Project). Their warning was clear: ALPRs, traffic cams, even the data inside your own car could all be used to track and surveil abortion patients. The kicker is that police don’t even need a warrant to get access.

Take this latest case. Texas law enforcement used a company called Flok, which doesn’t require a court order—just a reason for the search. What did these cops put on the dotted line? “Had an abortion.”

And it’s not just local; this kind of surveillance pulls in data from across the country! Civil liberties groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have spent years urging pro-choice states to stop sharing ALPR data with law enforcement in anti-abortion states—warning that they could inadvertently aid the investigation of abortion patients and providers.

Now, here we are.

I really urge you all to read this whole piece, because the dystopian future feminists spent years warning about is here now.