Google will delete location history for visits to abortion clinics

Google will automatically scrub information about users who visit abortion clinics or other places that could cause legal trouble now that the U.S. Supreme Court has opened the door states to ban abortion.

The company behind the Internet’s dominant search engine and the Android software that powers most of the world’s smartphones has outlined new privacy protections in Friday Blog Post.

In addition to automatically deleting visits to abortion clinics, Google also cites counseling centers, fertility centers, addiction treatment facilities, weight loss clinics and cosmetic surgery clinics as other destinations that will be deleted from users’ location history. Users have always had the option to edit their location stories themselves, but Google will proactively do it for them as an added layer of protection.

“We are committed to providing robust privacy protections to the people who use our products, and we will continue to look for new ways to strengthen and improve those protections,” Jen Fitzpatrick, Google’s senior vice president, wrote in the blog post.

The pledge comes amid escalating pressure on Google and other big tech companies to do more protect a wealth of sensitive personal information through their digital services and products by government bodies and other external parties.

Calls for tighter privacy controls were sparked by the US Supreme Court’s recent decision overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. That reversal could make abortion illegal in more than a dozen states, raising the specter that records of people’s locations, text messages, searches and emails could be used in prosecutions against abortion procedures or even medical help sought in miscarriages .

Like other tech companies, Google receives thousands of government requests each year for digital user records as part of investigations into wrongdoing. Google says it opposes search warrants and other requests that are too broad or appear unreasonable.