Virginia blocks a bill that would have stopped police from viewing period app data, raising fears it could be used to prosecute abortions

• A Virginia bill that would have prohibited police search warrants on menstrual cycle data was shelved.
• Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced his opposition to the bill this week, resulting in it being tabled.

A Virginia bill to shield data on menstrual cycles stored on period-tracking apps from law enforcement has been killed this week after Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced his opposition to the motion.

The bill, which was passed last week with bipartisan support in the Democrat-led Senate, would have prohibited search warrants to obtain menstrual health data stored on a computer, cellphone, or any other electronic device.

Around a third of menstruating adults use period-tracking apps, according to a 2019 survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Abortion rights activists have raised alarm at the idea that period-tracking apps could be used to prosecute abortion-law violations, following the overturning of Roe v. Wade last year.

Tarina Keene, executive director of Repro Rising Virginia, said that this latest development would pave the way for drastic anti-abortion measures.

"The Youngkin administration's opposition to this commonsense privacy protection measure shows his real intentions, to ban abortion and criminalize patients and medical providers," she said in a statement to The Guardian.

A Republican-led House subcommittee voted earlier this week to lay the bill on the table, essentially killing it, after Maggie Cleary, Youngkin's deputy secretary of public safety, told the subcommittee that it was not the legislature's responsibility to "set a limit" on what search warrants can do, the newspaper said.

"Currently any health information or any app information is available via search warrant," Cleary said, per The Guardian. "And we believe that should continue to be the case."

The subcommittee voted along party lines, meaning that the bill is unlikely to come up again during this current legislative session.

In the wake of the Roe v. Wade reversal, the Biden White House warned against women using period-tracking apps, with an expert telling Insider that companies might one day be forced to give user data to law enforcement agencies.

Abortion still remains accessible in Virginia, but without legal protection, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights. It is currently legal up to the end of the second trimester of pregnancy.

Last month, Democrats and some Republicans in Virginia's Senate voted down a proposal by Youngkin for a 15-week abortion ban.

The Guardian reported in June 2022 that American women started deleting period-tracking apps after the Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade, citing concerns that the data could be used to build a case against someone for getting an illegal abortion.