An analysis of 11 online pharmacies selling abortion pills: at least nine use third-party trackers such as Google Analytics to collect and share sensitive data
Curious about medical abortion for an unplanned pregnancy, I visited the site two months back to order MTP Kit. Onlineabortionpillrx : Buy Mifeprex Online Tweets: Josh Chin / @joshchin : Vital reporting. When I was home promoting “Surveillance State,” it became clear that abortion-ban enforcement was the one issue that might force the U.S. — or half of it, anyway — to wrestle seriously with the power states now have to control private lives through technology https://twitter.com/... William C. / @williamcson : “Tech companies are generally not bound by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA ... Nor does federal law set many limits on how companies can use this data.” https://twitter.com/... @privacydigest : Websites Selling Abortion Pills Are Sharing Sensitive Data With Google Law enforcement can potentially use this data to prosecute people who end their pregnancies with medication https://www.propublica.org/... Jennifer Gollan / @jennifergollan : NEW: Some people are increasingly turning to online pharmacies to buy abortion pills. But a @propublica investigation found websites that are sharing data with Google and other third parties. https://www.propublica.org/... Robin Marty / @robinmarty : Good thing no one is EVER going to prosecute the pregnant person *cough* AG Marshall *cough* https://www.propublica.org/... https://twitter.com/... @cakitchener : Online pharmacies that sell abortion pills are sharing sensitive data with Google and other third parties, which may allow law enforcement to prosecute those who use the medications to end their pregnancies. Important reporting from @jennifergollan https://www.propublica.org/... @propublica : New: Some sites selling abortion pills use technology that shares information with third parties like Google. Law enforcement can potentially use this data to prosecute people who end their pregnancies with medication. https://www.propublica.org/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This ProPublica finding extends a paper trail that has been building since the draft ruling reversing Roe. In May 2022, [[a:978559|SafeGraph stopped selling location data on visitors to Planned Parenthood and other family planning centers]], citing potential misuse; by August, [[a:981602|Tapestri disclosed that two companies had asked to buy device data revealing who visited abortion clinics]]. The location-broker layer was the first to be scrutinized.
The new wrinkle is the purchase funnel itself: at least nine of eleven online pharmacies selling abortion pills run third-party trackers such as Google Analytics, meaning the most legally sensitive transaction — ordering medication — generates commercial data trails outside any clinical record. That lands in an accountability gap the related coverage already maps: Google has not consistently deleted Maps location history around clinic visits despite its July 2022 pledge, and tech companies are generally not bound by HIPAA.
First-order effects
- Customers of these pharmacies are directly exposed: their visits, orders, and identities can be reconstructed from tracker data held by third parties, creating evidence usable by prosecutors in states where medication abortion is criminalized.
- The named pharmacies face immediate legal and reputational exposure for sharing sensitive health-purchase data with ad-tech vendors, and Google Analytics sits on the receiving end of that data flow regardless of intent.
Second-order effects
- Data intermediaries face the same forced-choice dynamic SafeGraph confronted: keep serving health-related clients or publicly curtail it to avoid becoming the next Tapestri-style story about buyers seeking enforcement-grade data.
- Pharmacies operating in this space will likely face pressure to strip third-party scripts or move to privacy-preserving analytics, raising their compliance costs relative to providers who never handled mail-order abortion demand.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, post-Roe enforcement increasingly runs on ordinary commercial infrastructure — location brokers, ad trackers, search logs — rather than medical records, because HIPAA does not reach consumer-facing health purchases.
- That gap points toward regulation or litigation targeting trackers themselves, with platforms like Google forced to define and enforce exclusions for reproductive-health data much as they were pushed to relabel certified pharmacy advertisers in Search.
The trend: Since Roe's reversal, every layer of the digital path to an abortion — search results, map history, location brokers, and now pharmacy checkout pages — is being revealed as a data-exposure surface that commercial actors, not clinics, control.