1.

First is framing -- women come first

1. Severity -- Policymaking deprioritizes violence against women in favor of crises politics
impacts, vote aff to break the cycle
Minnich 20 (James M Minnich, Dr. James M. Minnich joined the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific
Center for Security Studies in August 2016., September 2020, "SOCIETAL VIOLENCE
AGAINST WOMEN & NATIONAL INSECURITY: THE NEED FOR GENDERED
SECURITY," No Publication,
https://www.academia.edu/44218115/SOCIETAL_VIOLENCE_AGAINST_WOMEN_and_NATIO
NAL_INSECURITY_THE_NEED_FOR_GENDERED_SECURITY, accessed 11-9-2021 )ET

Coalesced around the principles of protection, prevention, participation, relief and recovery, the
UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) charged global leaders to protect women
and their rights in peace, peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peacebuilding.87 The dissonance between
government inaction and legal obligations toward implementing WPS suggests that states may not intuitively correlate
societal violence against women with insecurity in peace and conflict.88 Two factors—traditional
concepts of security and male-masculine dominance of security sectors—feature prominent in
inert approaches toward this exigent problem of practice.89 The WPS mandate confronts the cultural model of
the male-dominated security sector by directing all nations to address and resolve issues of women’s roles in peace and security.
Security sectors, or the public, national, and collective safety and security institutions that provide for security, are soundly
representative of the male domain and their interests, which well aligns to traditional security issues that scarcely consider
vulnerable populations fundamentally or the women’s security issue expressly.90 Traditional
security issues imply
threats against a sovereign state’s citizenry, territory, polity, economy, and interests, and views
the coherence of this juridical entity as the referent of security while often discounting individual
welfare or gendered security.91 By shifting the security referent from the polity to the people,
policymakers and practitioners alike can more distinctly discern security threats and aptly adopt
policy priorities to sensibly focus security resources.92 The WPS mandate is the global framework that gives rise
to a theory on gendered security. Gendered security is a methodology to strengthen solutions to state
and human security issues through an approach that frames individuals as the security focus
while accounting for gender-based needs and interests of women, men, girls, and boys in all security
situations.93 Frames are mental models for making sense, and reframing is a technique for
seeing issues anew, or from alternative perspectives.94 Applying a gendered security frame, or
gendered security perspective to security issues of peace and conflict offers security
practitioners a means to examine crises beyond a traditional security frame as they consider
gender-nuanced collective interests. Adeptly selecting security frames comes from familiarity of various approaches
and perspectives, and experience in application. Frames are akin to a manual transmission: the more experienced the user at
shifting gears, the more effortless and smooth the ride. Like transmission gears, frames have unique functions and are applied
based on needs. Security practitioners can learn a gendered security frame and its application value in peace and conflict by
considering gendered security principles of gendered security perspective, prevention, protection, and participation in the analysis
and implementation of security missions. While gender analyses of operational environments may vary, an effective technique is to
crosswalk the eight operational variables of political, military, economic, social, information, infrastructure, physical environment, and
time (PMESII-PT) with the four gendered security principles of gendered security perspective, prevention, protection, and
participation (Gendered Security Principles Four, or GSP4).95
To analyze the security environment through a
gendered security perspective is fundamental to understanding security’s broader contexts, and
its implications toward a gendered inclusive security that responds to the diverse security needs
of all. Gendered security prevention is substantially more than the absence of conflict as it
confronts cultural and structural catalysts that divide, devalue, demean, and degrade people
across a gendered social hierarchy. Gendered security protection opposes a trifurcated societal
violence of direct violence, structural violence, and cultural violence in times of peace and
conflict as it protects access, engagement and participation in all aspects of society. Gendered
security participation empowers the diverse and inclusive meaningful involvement of all genders
in all areas, at all levels, and at all times.

2. Prerequisite to preventing extinction – genocidal logic is the root cause of all

suffering

Schuster and Woods 21(Joshua Schuster, Joshua Schuster is associate professor of English and core
faculty member of the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism at Western University. He is the
author of The Ecology of Modernism: American Environments and Avant-Garde Poetics and co-author of
Calamity Theory: Three Critiques of Existential Risk, Derek Woods, 2021, “Calamity Theory: Three
Critiques of Existential Risk,” https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/calamity-theory, DOA:
8/1/2022)ET
Bostrom’s foundational 2002 essay on existential risk begins by setting the bar incredibly and unnecessarily high for a risk to be existential
according to his “typology of risk.”1 The
definitional standard for a danger to be existential is “one where an
adverse outcome would either annihilate Earth-originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its
potential” (ER, 2). Bostrom claims that a risk needs to be both global and terminal to constitute an existential risk. In this model, “global
endurable risks” that would create mass suffering but not lead to human extinction do not constitute true existential risks. In Bostrom’s
typology, planetary-scale historically violent events are consigned to the less risky category of “catastrophe.” A
terminal existential
event means either total extinction or some kind of irreversible change that would structurally prevent
humans from achieving their collective potential. In this classification system, genocide is by definition not an
existential risk since it is only supposedly localized at the level of the “genos” or a kind of human life,
not the whole of humanity. According to Bostrom, “An example of a local terminal risk would be genocide leading to the annihilation
of a people (this happened to several Indian [sic] nations)” (ER, 2). World wars, the enslavement of vast proportions of
the world, and bacterial and viral epidemics like the black plague and AIDS (and COVID-19) also would
not regis ter in existential terms since neither the entirety of humanity nor the whole structure that
facilitates human potential or “Earthoriginating intelligence” are at risk. As Bostrom states, “Tragic as such events
are to the people immediately affected, in the big picture of things—from the perspective of humankind as a whole—even the worst of these
catastrophes are mere ripples on the surface of the great sea of life” (ER, 2). Here we pause already on the first pages of Bostrom’s essay to
examine this controversial position. Perhaps the most startling aspect of Bostrom’s initial essay on existential risk is not its wide-eyed openness
to any species-wide crisis, real or speculative, but his insistence
on categorizing the large-scale violent events of the
past and present as not at all existential threats. By demarcating only extreme calamity to be truly
existential in scale, Bostrom’s claims for a strict existential threshold not only evinces obvious callousness, it
sets the bar too high to be a useful measure. This model regretfully but purposefully ignores the violence
and suffering inflicted on groups of people in which their existential condition is at stake. Bostrom
assumes this violence has been and will continue to be contained as “endurable global risks since
humanity could eventually recover” (2). This is dangerously close to rationalizing epochal histories of
the suffering of minoritized and oppressed peoples for the sake of purported definitional consistency
since something of “humanity” would survive. Furthermore, the threat of genocide and planetsweeping
violence still hangs over everyone and thus does bear directly on the existential condition of our
species. While it may be the case that humanity as a whole is not imperiled immediately in the event
of a particular genocide, that humans can intentionally commit such acts with explicit declarations
that some lives are worth less than others indicates that there is nothing in the human condition that
prevents humans from utterly destroying each other’s humanity. Does it really need to be said that the “logic” of
genocide qualifies as extinctionary, even if the results are often “incomplete”? Why has Bostrom then not built
this recognition into his philosophy? Genocides do precipitate species-wide existential threats because those
who perpetrate them seek a permanent remaking of the human condition, removing some ways of
being human from the earth and installing a new way of being human according to new rules. Even that
description fits Bostrom’s definition of an existential risk that would lead to a permanent constraint on humanity’s potential. As Hannah Arendt
detailed, some
humans can have their entire political being, their very access to the political,
permanently removed from them. To lose one’s political being is to lose one’s existential condition.
“What totalitarian ideologies therefore aim at is not the transformation of the outside world or the revolutionizing transmutation of society, but
the transformation of human nature itself. The concentration camps are the laboratories where changes in human nature are tested.”2 There
are no permanent, fail-safe solutions—political or technological— to prevent this kind of extreme
violence used in transforming human nature by genocidal means. There is no political system to get everyone to
agree and eschew violence, and there is also no existence without politics. Attempts to “solve” existential risks once and for
all and institute a predictable and controllable definition of the human (in effect abolishing the
political) are precisely the origin of genocidal logics. Since humans are inevitably risky toward each
other, Arendt adamantly insisted that building durable public institutions, constructing worlds in
common, and aspiring to shared long-term public goods are the only way to mitigate the inherent
vulnerabilities of the human condition.

The role of the ballot is to vote for the team that best resolves structural violence against
women through research and education about women’s suffering.

a. Breadth of Education – Violence against women is rarely discussed in the debate space
in favor of large scale impacts. Our ROTB promotes better diversity and breadth of education
b. Depth of knowledge – our ROTB forces teams to do in depth research to identify the
sources of oppression of women, which creates the tools to solves policymaking issues in the
real world

Rao and Sandler 16(Aruna Rao, Co-Founder, Gender At Work, Gender at Work is an
international NGO founded by the Association of Women’s Rights in Development, UNIFEM,
CIVICUS-World Alliance for Citizen Participation, and Women’s Learning Partnership, Joanne
Sandler, 2016, "The Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Development," No Publication,
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-137-38273-3?page=2#toc, DOA: 11-9-2021 )ET

While Mukhopadhyay usefully separates the ‘technical’ from the ‘political’, we would contend
that when most effective, there is a blurring between the two. In essence, this is akin to the
distinction between practical and strategic interests. Molyneux, the originator of those terms, pointed out that
they were not offered as binaries and the practical interests can sometimes form the basis for
political transformation. Whether they do or not ‘is to a large degree contingent on political and discursive interventions
which help to bring about the transformation of these struggles’ (Molyneux 1998). Women’s practical interests, such as
access to electricity, water, transport and credit, are not only hugely important in their own right
but resolving such issues can be implemented in a way that opens a door for political
consciousness-building and organizing. That this doesn’t always happen is obvious. It is important ‘to avoid
conflating “feminist” and “gender expert” as many gender experts are not feminists, and most feminists are not employed as gender
experts’ (Sandler 2015). In our experience, effective gender specialists and femocrats are constantly strategizing about how to
exploit the ebb and flow of opportunities and risks within their institution and the context in which those institutions are situated to
advance a feminist agenda. The wins may be small but the process they engage in is highly political. The debates on the risks of
pursuing a strong political agenda in bureaucracies, the images of how feminist bureaucrats engage with bureaucracy – from
institutional entrepreneur to tempered radical – and the results they generate are rich in theoretical insights and practical examples.
A recent publication, Feminists in Development Organizations: Change from the Margins (Eyben and Turquet 2013), compiles a
wide-ranging set of stories about how feminists work politically to promote their organizations’ gender equality goals. In her
contribution, Eyben points out that,
‘Feminist officials’ potential to support social transformative action
depends on them having a feminist commitment and motivation combined with a political ability
to operate strategically, both within and beyond the confines of the bureaucratic system’ (Eyben
2013).

C1 is Abortion Access
Biometrics are used to target people seeking abortions
Kerry 2022(Cameron F. Kerry, Cameron Kerry is a global thought leader on privacy, artificial
intelligence, and cross-border challenges in information technology. He joined Governance
Studies and the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings in December 2013 as the first
Ann R. and Andrew H. Tisch Distinguished Visiting Fellow. Previously, Kerry served as general
counsel and acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce, where he was a leader on a
wide of range of issues including technology, trade, and economic growth and security. He
continues to speak and write on these issues, focusing primarily on privacy, artificial
intelligence, and international data flows, along with other digital economy issues. During his
time as acting secretary, Kerry served as chief executive of this Cabinet agency and its 43,000
employees around the world as well as an adviser to then President Barack Obama. His tenure
marked the first time in U.S. history two siblings have served in the president's Cabinet at the
same time, 7-7-2022, "How comprehensive privacy legislation can guard reproductive privacy,"
Brookings,
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2022/07/07/how-comprehensive-privacy-legislation
-can-guard-reproductive-privacy/, DOA: 3-11-2023)ET
The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overruling Roe v. Wade has raised unsettling questions about the
status of the Court’s right to privacy jurisprudence. On a more immediate level, though, the decision has
also triggered deep concern about its impact on the information privacy of women who have
abortions while living in states that ban abortion, as well as others who help them, promote travel to
other states, or sell abortion medications. With abortion bans in several states taking immediate
effect, state prosecutors—or anti-abortion activists—can begin to investigate and prosecute. As they
do, they may seek evidence not only from devices and accounts of targets but also from the wide array
of app providers, communications services, advertisers, and data brokers able to collect unlimited
information today. This kind of evidence can include geolocation data that reveals visits to places where abortions are performed and
the duration of visits; data from “femtech” apps and devices that show interruptions in menstrual cycles; web
searches for abortion services or help; data or communications with providers or family about obtaining an abortion; and payments data
reflecting purchases of abortion services or medications, among many sources of digital evidence. For example, Fitbit data has already been
used to discredit a rape allegation, so it could be used to discredit a similar exception to abortion restrictions.

Tufekci 2022(Zeynep Tufekci, Zeynep Tufekci, a New York Times Opinion columnist, writes about
sociology and the social effects of technology and has closely examined the impact of and responses to
the Covid pandemic. She is a visiting professor at the new Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics
and Security at Columbia Journalism School and an associate professor at the University of North
Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science. Her research revolves around politics, civics,
movements, privacy and surveillance, as well as data and algorithms, 5-19-2022, " We Need to Take Back
Our Privacy," The New York Times,
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/19/opinion/privacy-technology-data.html, DOA: 3-11-2023)ET
Over 130 years ago, a young lawyer saw an amazing new gadget and had a revolutionary vision — technology can threaten our privacy. “Recent inventions and
business methods call attention to the next step which must be taken for the protection of the person,” wrote the lawyer, Louis Brandeis, warning that laws needed
to keep up with technology and new means of surveillance, or Americans would lose their “right to be let alone.” Decades later, the right to privacy discussed in that
1890 law review article and Brandeis’s opinions as a Supreme Court justice, especially in the context of new technology, would be cited as a foundational principle of
the constitutional protections for many rights, including contraception, same-sex intimacy and abortion. Now the Supreme Court seems poised to rule that there is
no constitutional protection for the right to abortion. Surveillance made possible by minimally-regulated digital
technologies could help law enforcement or even vigilantes track down women who might seek
abortions and medical providers who perform them in places where it would become criminalized.
Women are urging one another to delete phone apps like period trackers that can indicate they are pregnant. But frantic individual efforts to

swat away digital intrusions will do too little. What’s needed, for all Americans, is a full legal and political reckoning with the reckless
manner in which digital technology has been allowed to invade our lives. The collection, use and manipulation of electronic data

must finally be regulated and severely limited. Only then can we comfortably enjoy all the good that
can come from these technologies. *** Brandeis’s concern about technology’s threat to liberty was stoked by the introduction, two years
before his article, of a Kodak camera that was small enough to carry, cheap enough to afford, worked at the press of a button, and came loaded for 100 shots. This
new portability meant that intrusions that would once have been impractical, were now easy. The
Constitution doesn’t mention cameras
or wiretapping or cellphones or electronic data or artificial intelligence. But it does talk about
protection of beliefs (First Amendment), the sanctity of the home (Third), the right against
unreasonable searches of persons, houses, papers and effects (Fourth) and protection against
self-incrimination (Fifth). Those were some of the pillars upon which Brandeis rested his argument
that laws need to enforce our liberty against intrusion, even as technology morphed its shape. In 1928, as a
Supreme Court justice, Brandeis dissented from the majority that allowed the government to listen in on suspects’ telephone conversations without warrants.
Brandeis pointed out that opening and reading a sealed envelope required a warrant, so wiretapping should also require a warrant. In the latter half of the century,
though, the court began to catch up with the need to more broadly protect privacy, and regulate technology. In legalizing the right to contraceptives, in Griswold v.
Connecticut in 1965, the court brought up the profound privacy violations that would arise from enforcing a ban: “Would we allow the police to search the sacred
precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage
relationship,” Justice William O. Douglas wrote in his opinion for the majority, which also articulated the protection of privacy as a constitutional right. Griswold was
cited as precedent eight years later in Roe v. Wade, extending constitutional protection to abortion. Once again, the court highlighted privacy, not the importance of
reproductive choice, as a right. Laws against same-sex intimate relationships would be struck down on similar grounds. Other privacy protections were enacted, as
well. In 1970, rules were made to regulate the use of information on creditworthiness. The Privacy Act of 1974 established protections for personally identifiable
information that was collected or held by federal agencies. The government tightened oversight for wiretaps in 1967 and then in 1977, requiring warrants for
domestic wiretaps. But
in the decades since then, there has been an explosion in technological advances and
surveillance capabilities. So many more transactions and activities are carried out over digital
networks, and billions of people carry pocket computers that leave constant footprints. All this can be
scooped up by a vast apparatus of surveillance, to be analyzed by powerful computational techniques,
along with images from cameras on streets, phones and satellites. Legislators around the world have
largely allowed all this to proceed, with the United States lagging even more. Fears of how law
enforcement and anti-abortion vigilantes could use such data to hunt down those who run afoul of
new laws have illuminated a terrifying rabbit hole of privacy abuse. After the Supreme Court’s draft opinion that could
overturn Roe was leaked, the Motherboard reporter Joseph Cox paid a company $160 to get a week’s worth of aggregate data on people who visited more than 600
Planned Parenthood facilities around the country. This data included where they came from, how long they remained and where they went afterward. The company
got this location data from ordinary apps in people’s phones. Such data is also collected from the phones themselves and by cellphone carriers. That this was
aggregated, bulk data — without names attached — should be of no comfort. Researchers have repeatedly shown that even in such data sets, it is often possible to
pinpoint a person’s identity — deanonymizing data — by triangulating information from different sources, like, say, matching location data on someone’s commute
from home to work, or their purchases in stores. This also helps evade legal privacy protections that apply only to “personally identifiable information” — records
explicitly containing identifiers like names or Social Security numbers. For example, it was recently revealed that Grindr, the world’s most popular gay dating app, was
selling data about its users. A priest resigned after the Catholic publication The Pillar deanonymized his data, identified him and then outed him by tracking his visits
to gay bars and a bathhouse. Phone companies were caught selling their customers’ real-time location data, and it reportedly ended up in the hands of bounty
hunters and stalkers. In 2014 BuzzFeed News reported that an Uber executive had admitted to tracking at least one journalist who reported on the company. In
2012, the company had also posted data analyses on its blog revealing possible one-night stands people were having in major cities. In criticizing such practices in a
piece I co-wrote at the time, I pointed out that such methods could also track visits to Planned Parenthood offices. Very few companies would boast about such
things anymore. But
clearly, such data could be used to identify, for example, women meeting to arrange for
access to abortion pills, and other women who might travel to get these pills or seek support. To
deflect these dangers, people are advised to leave their phone behind or use “burner” phones, or turn
off certain settings. None of these options works well. For one thing, turning off settings in apps doesn’t stop the phone or the cellphone company from
continuing to collect location data. It’s also not that reliable. I have turned off location tracking many times in reputable apps only to be surprised to notice later that
it turned itself back on because I clicked on something unrelated that, the fine print might reveal, turns location tracking back on. I gave up — and I have been coding
since I was a tween, have a degree in computer programming, have worked in the software industry, and have been reading and writing about privacy and
technology for my whole adult life. My impression is that friends with similar professional profiles have given up, too. Using burner phones — which you use and
discard — sounds cool but is difficult in practice. Matt Blaze, a leading expert on digital security and encryption, said that trying to maintain a burner phone required
“using almost everything I know about communications systems and security,” and he still wasn’t sure he had completely evaded surveillance and identification.
How about leaving your phone behind? Let me just say, good luck. Even
if you don’t carry a digital device and only use cash,
commercially available biometric databases can carry out facial recognition at scale. Clearview AI says
it has more than 10 billion images of people taken from social media and news articles that it sells to
law enforcement and private entities. Given the ubiquity of cameras, it will soon be difficult to walk
anywhere without being algorithmically recognized. Even a mask is no barrier. Algorithms can
recognize people from other attributes as well. In China, the police have employed “gait recognition”
— using artificial intelligence to identify people by the way they walk and by body features other than
their face.

A ban is urgent
Tufekci 2022(Zeynep Tufekci, Zeynep Tufekci, a New York Times Opinion columnist, writes about
sociology and the social effects of technology and has closely examined the impact of and responses to
the Covid pandemic. She is a visiting professor at the new Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics
and Security at Columbia Journalism School and an associate professor at the University of North
Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science. Her research revolves around politics, civics,
movements, privacy and surveillance, as well as data and algorithms, 5-19-2022, " We Need to Take Back
Our Privacy," The New York Times,
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/19/opinion/privacy-technology-data.html, DOA: 3-11-2023)ET
Despite what my concerns might lead some to believe, I am not a technophobe. Like many others who study privacy and technology, I’m often
an early adopter of tech, and get enthusiastic for its many potential uses. But I’m also a sociologist studying authoritarianism, and our digital
infrastructure has become the infrastructure of authoritarianism. When I started saying this awhile back, many
people would tell me
that I was conflating the situation in China with that of Western countries where such surveillance is
usually undertaken for commercial purposes and we have limits to what governments would want to
do. I always thought: If you build it, they will come for it. Criminalization of abortion may well be the first
wide-scale test of this, but even if that doesn’t come to pass, we’re just biding our time. Many of our
existing legal protections are effectively outdated. For example, law enforcement can obtain emails,
pictures or any data you stored in the cloud without a warrant, and without notifying you, so long as it
is older than six months. This is because when the initial law on email privacy was drafted in 1986, online, or what we now call cloud,
storage was very expensive and people downloaded or deleted their email regularly. So anything older than six months was considered
abandoned. Almost three decades later, it simply means years of personal digital history — which didn’t
exist when the law was drafted — are up for grabs. This doesn’t mean we should snuff out digital technology or advances in
algorithms. Even if it were possible, it wouldn’t be desirable. The government should regulate these technologies so we
can use them, and enjoy their many positives, without out-of-control surveillance. Congress, and
states, should restrict or ban the collection of many types of data, especially those used solely for
tracking, and limit how long data can be retained for necessary functions — like getting directions on a
phone. Selling, trading and merging personal data should be restricted or outlawed. Law enforcement could
obtain it subject to specific judicial oversight. Researchers have been inventing privacy-preserving methods for
analyzing data sets when merging them is in the public interest but the underlying data is sensitive — as
when health officials are tracking a disease outbreak and want to merge data from multiple hospitals. These techniques allow computation but
make it hard, if not impossible, to identify individual records. Companies
are unlikely to invest in such methods, or use
end-to-end encryption as appropriate to protect user data, if they could continue doing whatever they
want. Regulation could make these advancements good business opportunities, and spur innovation. I
don’t think people like things the way they are. When Apple changed a default option from “track me” to “do not track me” on its phones, few
people chose to be tracked. And many who accept tracking probably don’t realize how much privacy they’re giving up, and what this kind of
data can reveal. Many location collectors get their data from ordinary apps — could be weather, games, or anything else — that often bury that
they will share the data with others in vague terms deep in their fine print. Under these conditions, requiring people to click “I accept” to
lengthy legalese for access to functions that have become integral to modern life is a masquerade, not informed consent. Many
politicians have been reluctant to act. The tech industry is generous, cozy with power, and politicians
themselves use data analysis for their campaigns. This is all the more reason to press them to move forward. In his seminal
dissent against warrantless wiretapping, Brandeis quoted an earlier justice, noting, “Time works changes, brings into existence new conditions
and purposes. Therefore, a principle, to be vital, must be capable of wider application than the mischief which gave it birth.”
That core
principle of liberty, the right to be free of intrusions and surveillance of this scope and scale, needs to
be defended against the new technologies that have undermined it so gravely. Otherwise, as Brandeis
quoted in his dissent, “rights declared in words might be lost in reality.”

The impact is twofold

1. Mass Incarceration
Abdollah 2022(Tami Abdollah, USA TODAY, 6-12-2022, "New abortion laws could see many women,
doctors face criminal charges," USA Today,
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/06/12/new-abortion-laws-could-see-many-women
-doctors-face-criminal-charges/7571034001/?gnt-cfr=1 FREE LINK:
https://archive.is/i2qAN#selection-735.0-770.0, DOA: 3-20-2023)ET

If the Supreme Court rules to overturn Roe v. Wade this month, lawmakers and law enforcement may
have varied means to go after women and health care providers who participate in abortions in large
part because of technology that didn't exist before the 1973 landmark ruling protecting abortion
rights. That means period tracking apps, tele-health appointments, mail-in pharmacy requests and
other online medical records and data could be used as evidence in criminal cases, experts said. At least
26 states are expected to move quickly to ban abortion if the court's conservative majority strikes down federally-protected abortion rights.
Among them are 13 – including Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Idaho, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming – that have "trigger laws" that would take
effect automatically or through a quick state action if Roe no longer applies, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health
research and policy organization. The
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers concluded in a report in
August that anti-abortion measures will lead to "rampant criminalization through regulatory
enforcement and to mass incarceration on an unprecedented scale," especially if Roe is overturned. Because
some states have already passed laws redefining "personhood" to include an unborn child, it's
possible people who seek out abortions or anyone who helps them could face charges of feticide or
aggravated assault, the report said. Most of the rhetoric around penalizing illegal abortions has targeted healthcare workers who help
people obtain abortions rather than pregnant women, said Brietta Clark, a health law and reproductive justice professor at Loyola Law School in
Los Angeles. But she said that unless laws clearly state women won't be prosecuted for the outcomes of their pregnancy, they are still at risk.
Many states regularly bring criminal cases against women who are seen as putting their unborn child's
life at risk, including charges of child abuse, child neglect or endangerment or feticide, manslaughter
and murder, said Dana Sussman, acting executive director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women. The group has documented
1,331 cases from 2006 through 2020 where a woman was arrested, detained or otherwise deprived of their liberty for a reason related to their
pregnancy. Altogether, since the Roe ruling, the researchers found more than 1,700 of these cases, which they noted is likely an undercount. The
majority were economically disadvantaged women of color who often must rely on publicly run or funded hospitals. "Our criminal codes have
ballooned, the War on Drugs has transformed the types of charges that are brought, how many people are criminalized and the communities
impacted," Sussman said. "And we have used the criminal legal system to respond to public health crises, to mental health crises, to poverty, to
education, in ways that I don't think were fully understood or fully applied back in 1973." Even in California, which has vowed to become a
sanctuary for women seeking abortions, the state's attorney general issued a legal alert in January to law enforcement advising them that the
state's penal code "intended to hold accountable those who inflict harm on pregnant individuals, resulting in miscarriage or stillbirth, not to
punish people who suffer the loss of their pregnancy." The proclamation came after two women in California's Central Valley in 2018 and then in
2019 gave birth to stillborn infants and were flagged by medical staff after testing positive for methamphetamine. Both of the women were
jailed and eventually charged with fetal murder. The charges against one woman were dismissed in May 2021 and the other woman was freed in
March after years in prison. "Women who have to rely on public healthcare systems have the least amount of privacy, there’s a lot that the state
can do through that process to basically monitor, surveil and control," said Clark, the law professor. It's possible some prosecutors will shy away
from pursuing criminal charges against a pregnant person or anyone who helps her seek an abortion. To date, more than 80 elected district
attorneys and attorneys generals around the country, including in red states, have committed to using their discretion to not charge individuals
or those who help them in ending a pregnancy should Roe be overturned, said Miriam Krinsky, executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution,
an organization that advocates for criminal justice reform. The nonprofit has been reaching out to elected prosecutors around the country
willing to make such a commitment should Roe be overturned, Krinsky said, noting that prosecutors frequently decide whether to use their
limited resources to prioritize certain crimes over others. "We are now facing a moment where elected public prosecutors are going to be the
last line of defense," Krinsky said. "Just because something can be prosecuted doesn’t mean it should be prosecuted." Tom Jipping, a senior legal
fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, said "rogue prosecutors" are "going to be a problem" for
lawmakers who want laws criminalizing abortion to be enforced. "This is not about prosecutorial discretion, it’s about who gets to make the
law, and it’s not prosecutors," Jipping said. "If this is something they want to do they ought to run for the legislature." Jonathan Mitchell, Texas’
former solicitor general who crafted the state’s abortion law SB 8, which enforces a ban on abortion as early as six weeks by enabling private
citizens to sue those who aid and abet, told USA TODAY that he doesn’t believe most of the existing legislative efforts by states to ban abortion
will be very effective. In many red states, abortion clinics are located in more liberal cities where the prosecutor won’t bring charges or where it
would be hard to get juries to convict even if they do, Mitchell said. And since states do not run the postal service, it's additionally difficult to
detect and prosecute those who distribute pregnancy-ending pills on the black market. “I think anti-abortion advocates who pushed for these
trigger bans are going to be disappointed when they take effect,” Mitchell said. “Laws of this sort worked in 1970 or 1960 when every state
banned abortion, they didn’t have abortion pills and didn’t have one of our two major political parties committed to the ideology of legal
abortion. Also, they didn’t have widespread internet access. What worked in the United States in 1970 is not necessarily going to work in the
United States in 2022.”

Cowan 19(Beryl Ann Cowan, Beryl Ann Cowan, JD, PhD, is a clinical and community psychologist as well
as a trained attorney in the greater Boston area. Cowan provides clinical treatment to children, youth,
and families and has a strong commitment to working with marginalized populations experiencing a
range of psycho-social stressors. In addition to her clinical work, Cowan is actively engaged in projects
that promote accessible and culturally competent services to underserved communities while at the
same time advocating for equitable and just policies at the local, state and federal levels. She is currently
a member of the Human Rights Committee at Bay Cove Human Service Agency where she uses her legal
and mental health training to monitor service delivery and policies that impact consumers with
emotional, behavioral and intellectual disabilities. In recent years, Cowan designed a curriculum focused
on the developmental and mental health needs of children and families living in poverty that is used in
the training and supervision of pediatric dental residents at several clinics in poor urban settings, rural
communities and Native American reservations. Cowan’s research interests are in the field of family
homelessness. She served as a member of the 2009 APA Presidential Task Force on Psychology’s
Response to Homelessness and was a co-editor and contributing author of the book "Supporting
Families Experiencing Homelessness: Current Practices and Future Directions" (Springer 2013). She
received her joint doctoral training at Georgia State University (2007) and her law degree from Emory
University (1980), April 2019, "Incarcerated women: Poverty, trauma and unmet need,"
https://www.apa.org, https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/indicator/2019/04/incarcerated-women,
DOA: 12-5-2021)ET

Rising rates of female incarceration reflect disturbing social trends: A criminal justice system that
exploits the poor and vulnerable; emphasis on law enforcement and punishment over treatment for
substance abuse; throw-away attitudes towards persons with serious mental illness; and misogyny
(Incarcerated Women and Girls, The Sentencing Project, 2018). The push to incarcerate more women ignores the social
and psychological forces that often underlie female offending, including higher-than-average rates of
lifetime exposure to cumulative trauma, as well as physical and sexual victimization; untreated mental
illness; the use of substances to manage distress; and behavioral choices that arise in conjunction with
gross economic disparities (Bloom and Covington, 2008). Compared to male inmates, females report higher rates of incidences of
physical and sexual abuse, as well as histories of emotional and behavioral disorders (Ney, Ramirez and Van Dieten, 2012). Having led lives
where they were sole caregivers for children and with reliance on extremely limited income, women inmates tend to be poorer on average than
males. In fact, in situations where cash bail is required as a condition for release, more women languish in jails in pretrial detention without
having been convicted of a crime (Sawyer, 2018). Correctional
facilities exacerbate the vulnerabilities of female
inmates, regardless of age, without providing rehabilitation or treatment services needed. Given the
prevalence of abuse histories of women and girls in correctional facilities, the need for
trauma-sensitive settings and services is paramount. Females in adult settings report higher rates than males of physical
and sexual victimization during incarceration (Wolf , Blitz, Shi, Bachman & Siegel, 2006) with more violent acts perpetrated by fellow inmates
than by correctional officers. Similarly, girls report higher rates of victimization during juvenile commitments than same-aged boys (Beck,
Canton & Hartge, 2013.) Few correctional settings have programmatic resources or specially trained staff to address the unique and pervasive
needs of female offenders. Substance abuse and mental health treatment are scarce, and in some settings, nonexistent. Taken
together,
the harsh rules and regulations of correctional facilities, the climate of violence and dysfunction and
the preexisting vulnerabilities of inmates place them at greater risk of destabilization and distress. For
some, acting out behaviors result in infractions and greater restrictions, including solitary confinement. Upon release, women and
girls face uphill battles as they return to their communities. Many women have significant health
challenges as well as emotional and behavioral disorders. For those who have not received the mental
health or substance abuse treatment needed during incarceration, rates of relapse is high, especially in
the absence of appropriate community-based services. Stigma facing female parolees has been found to be greater than
that facing males. Fewer halfway programs or shelter beds exist for women. Female parolees have greater
difficulty obtaining employment and housing than males and are at greater risk for living without
homes( Bandele, 2017). Girls leaving juvenile settings have great need for educational opportunities,
job training, housing, mental health and mentoring services. Without comprehensive supports, women and girls
are likely to be revictimized and experience the panoply of distress associated with it. Recidivism is
linked to the failure to provide women with the economic, health and psychosocial supports necessary
to enhance well-being.

Massoglia et al 14 finalizes(Michael Massoglia, Department of Sociology, University of

Wisconsin-Madison, Paul-Philippe Pare b , Jason Schnittker c , Alain Gagnon d, 2014, "The relationship
between incarceration and premature adult mortality: Gender specific evidence," No Publication,
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0049089X14000623, DOA: 12-5-2021)ET

Education, violence, drug use, and cigarette use are all predictive of premature mortality among women, in marked contrast to family
background. Yet despite the introduction of these measures, the key relationship observed in Model 2 remains: Model 3 shows incarceration is a
significant predictor of premature mortality for women but not for men. Model 4 introduces two additional blocks of
variables. The first block includes three life course factors often associated with health and mortality: marital status, poverty status and
employment status. The second block includes locus of control, health problems prior to incarceration and whether the respondent has health
insurance. Not surprisingly, many of these variables – marriage and employment status, whether the respondent had insurance and health
problems prior to incarceration – are associated with mortality. Model
4 provides the most stringent test of the
incarceration–mortality relationship, but reveals patterns consistent with the earlier models. Even in
the presence of many control variables significantly related to mortality, a robust relationship remains
between incarceration and premature mortality for women, but not for men. Formerly incarcerated
women have 2.5 times (exp. 0.907; p < .05) higher odds of early mortality than women without a history of
incarceration. While the magnitude of this coefficient is reduced between Model 1 and Model 4, women who were incarcerated
consistently have higher risks of premature mortality across all models. Of particular note, we find this relationship even after accounting for a
range of factors, including family background factors (such as parental education level), behavioral factors (such as drug use), and life course
factors (such as marriage and employment). In an even more direct test of a spurious relationship, the relationship remains significant even
after accounting for prior health problems. In
Model 4, we also formally tested the difference in mortality risk
across genders, and find that female ex-inmates are at a significantly higher mortality risk than male (p
< .01).

2. Poverty
Post-roe, surveillance state can deter people from seeking abortions
Jones 2022(Ja'han Jones, Ja'han Jones is The ReidOut Blog writer. He's a futurist and multimedia
producer focused on culture and politics. His previous projects include "Black Hair Defined" and the
"Black Obituary Project., 5-3-2022, "Right-wing vigilantes are sure to emerge if and when Roe v. Wade is
overturned," MSNBC,
https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/roe-v-wade-opinion-surveillance-rcna27083, DOA:
3-20-2023)ET

The unprecedented leak of a draft opinion Monday suggested the Supreme Court will overturn
Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion
rights ruling, inevitably ushering in a new era of surveillance. Extremely intrusive snooping is essentially
what it would take to crack down on abortion and deter Americans from pursuing what had been their
constitutional right for nearly five decades. That surveillance has already begun in some regards, and we can expect it to get
even worse if and when the court’s ruling is handed down. We saw one creepy method of surveillance last year in Texas, when a right-wing
anti-abortion group created a website to snitch on people believed to be violating the state’s restrictive abortion law. That website was trolled
Whether it’s private vigilantes empowered by laws like
into extinction, but the fundamental aim behind it remains.
Texas Senate Bill 8 or public officials conducting state-sanctioned surveillance, anti-abortion overseers
still have many tools at their disposal to essentially spy on fellow Americans. A Fast Company op-ed written by
Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, last year explained how these people will likely go about
snooping on abortion-seekers and providers: It’s
all but certain that police and prosecutors will tap into the full
fearsome force of the local surveillance state to find such evidence. Using geofence warrants, courts can compel
companies to provide the device history of everyone in a specified map area. Law enforcement could use nearly any pretext to demand that
Google and other tech companies provide the name of everyone who visits an abortion provider. Virtually
anyone suing to prevent
or punish an abortion could subpoena location data used to track a person’s phone, digital medical
records and, as Cahn noted, data monitored by period trackers to determine whether someone is
pregnant. And since some states are considering making it illegal for residents to obtain an abortion in
another state, that gives prosecutors and other anti-abortion litigants even more incentive to pry
loose data about where private citizens are traveling. Referencing the Texas law, Cahn also laid out a scenario in which
schools play a role in the anti-abortion police state: Texas education officials could weaponize the state’s school surveillance network,
identifying any public school students who search for information about abortion. Such tracking has grown rapidly during the pandemic, with
more than 200 school districts secretly surveilling students’ email, web history, and social media posts without their knowledge or consent. I
should say here: Concern about private citizens’ data being used for nefarious purposes like these is the primary reason people should be
worried about Elon Musk’s expected takeover of Twitter. It’s not implausible to think he’d support sharing data Twitter collects with
anti-abortion groups and law enforcement officials — basically, anyone with a wallet or subpoena big enough. And these worries aren’t
hypothetical. Vice reported Tuesday on a data firm that is selling information about people who visit clinics that provide abortions, including
Beyond that, we can expect the anti-abortion
where they came from, how long they stayed and where they went afterwards.
police state to ramp up even more as the means of having an abortion get easier due to technological
and medical advancements. Several states ban telehealth appointments for abortion, which are remote conferences between
providers and patients about how to receive abortion care. Providers may prescribe medication to induce abortion, which several states have
also banned, during or after the appointments. The forces seeking to stop these kinds of interactions will need to probe abortion-seekers’
computer use and potentially even their mail.

This is critical
Zhou and Li 2022(Youyou Zhou, Li Zhou,7-1-2022, "Who overturning Roe hurts most, explained in 7
charts," Vox,
https://www.vox.com/2022/7/1/23180626/roe-dobbs-charts-impact-abortion-women-rights, DOA:
7-19-2022)ET
For Colleen McNicholas, a physician in Missouri, the impact of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision can already be keenly felt. The
Planned Parenthood in St. Louis where she works — the last operating abortion clinic in the state — has halted all abortion appointments
since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, stripping Americans of their constitutional right to an abortion. For now, McNicholas is
advising patients on alternative options in other states, including Illinois, where there’s another clinic just 15 miles away. That location, she
notes, is increasingly serving people from as far away as Texas and Mississippi. “We are doing what we can to help patients understand their
own reality,” McNicholas told Vox. “We’re figuring out how they can pay for a procedure, figuring out what’s going to happen to their family
when they are trying to access that care, how to get them resources to pay for child care.” These are difficult questions. Already, many
people have had to seek abortions out of state, or put them on hold. At least some will likely have to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.
And given disparities in health care access, Black women, young women, and low-income women are
among those disproportionately expected to bear the burdens of these new restrictions, which could
mean greater poverty, and even a greater likelihood of death down the line. “This decision is structural
violence,” says Boston University health law professor Julia Raifman. “The US already has higher maternal mortality
than many countries. This will exacerbate that. The US already has higher child poverty than many
countries. This will exacerbate that.” The data, ultimately, backs up Raifman’s assertion. Tens of millions of women
are directly affected by this decision. Missouri is one of nine states where a ban or near ban on abortion was set to go into effect
since Roe was overturned, and as many as 17 other states could soon follow suit. (Notably, several bans have been put on hold because of
legal challenges that have been filed.) About 33.7 million women, or about half of reproductive-age women (defined as those between 15
and 44, in this analysis) in the US, live in states where there are poised to be new restrictions. About 13.9 million have already lost their
rights to legal abortion where they live, or are about to lose them, in most cases in less than a month. Another 6.8 million face early-term
restrictions. And 13.1 million women live in states where anti-abortion legislation has been proposed, or where a Republican-led state
legislature may pursue future restrictions. The number of people who will have to carry their pregnancies to term is tougher to estimate,
though numbers from previous years may offer some clues. According to data from the CDC, about 255,000 legal abortions took place in
2019 in the states where abortions are now banned or likely to be banned. While some women may still be able to stop a pregnancy at an
abortion facility in a neighboring state, some won’t be able to do that. Middlebury College economics professor Caitlin Myers looked into the
data on access to abortion facilities around the country, and predicted in May that about 24 percent of women who’d like an abortion would
be unable to reach a provider in the affected states, under the new laws, and that three-quarters of those women would give birth in the first
year after a Roe reversal. Myers’s analysis assumes one-fourth of abortion seekers who can’t get out of their state might be able to get the
procedure through other means. Assuming that the number of people seeking abortions in the affected states in the next year is the same as
those who got abortions in 2019 (the most recent year for which we have data), about two in 10 women hoping to stop their pregnancy
would have to give birth in the next 12 months. The calculation is a general estimate. People in the same state can still have very different
lived experiences depending on how far away the nearest facilities are. While people in states with abortion bans are most directly affected
by these laws, activists emphasize that everyone across the country will feel the repercussions, with those in blue states expected to see
delays in care due to an influx of new patients. McNicholas notes that the Illinois clinic nearest to Missouri, for example, has already seen a
surge of interest and will likely face staffing pressures.

And this is a form of oppression

Carson 19 (Saphronia Carson, University of Central Florida, Interdisciplinary Studies,

Undergraduate. “An Examination of Oppression Via Anti-Abortion Legislation”, University
of Central Florida STARS, 2019,
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1675&context=honorstheses.
DOA: 8/31/2022) SAP
Women often comprised a majority of the slave population due to their ability to bear children (Soomer 2000). They were dehumanized as
breeders and whores to justify the rampant practice of rape, and the children of those unions were frequently sold into slavery (Soomer 2000).
Enslaved women would sometimes abort their offspring in a simultaneous act of mercy for their unborn child and rebellion against their
designated role as breeder (Schiebinger 2005 p. 318). Thus, plantation owners sought to restrict enslaved women’s knowledge about birth
control and abortion in order to avoid this rebellion and maximize their profits (Ross 1998). These are just a few examples of the ways in which
enslaved women’s reproductive capacities were manipulated and commodified for other’s gain, but they demonstrate the important role of
reproductive oppression in the broader system of slavery. These
historical connections between reproductive
oppression and more general oppression unveil a pattern on which my argument centers: systems of
domination manipulate women’s reproduction to maintain control over the dominated peoples at
large. The following two examples of anti-abortion legislation connected to current examples of oppression suggest that modern forms of
domination are using reduced access to abortion to maintain control. I argue that this suggests that reduced access to abortion is a
form of reproductive oppression because it aligns with the historical pattern identified above. First, some
scholars link the war on drugs with the anti-abortion movement and antiabortion legislation. At a superficial level, there are many similarities
between the anti-abortion movement and the War on Drugs. For example, Ferraiolo (2014) argues that marijuana usage and abortion are both
“morality policy” issues used to garner support for one political party or alternatively to malign the other political party. Paltrow (2001) finds
eight distinctive similarities between the War on Drugs and what she calls the “war on abortion”: control and punishment justified by illegality,
restrictions on speech, limited access, the language of “epidemics”, lack of education surrounding both sex and drugs, choice rhetoric, child
protection as justification for illegality, and disproportionate harm for African American women (Paltrow 2001). These similarities indicate a
broader political agenda that acts to reduce civil liberties and social mobility for women and people of color. They also suggest that the
anti-abortion movement may overlap with the War on Drugs.

C2 is Aid

The US uses biometrics for humanitarian aid

Polk 20 (Alexandria Polk, Presidential Management Fellow with the CFPB, recently
completed a rotation in USAID’s Technology Division as a Gender Advisor, MA from Johns
Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. 9/2/2020. “Big Brother Turns Its Eye
on Refugees”, Foreign Policy,
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/02/big-brother-turns-its-eye-on-refugees/. DOA:
3/27/2023) SAP
Biometrics have successfully provided a universal identity to refugees, many of whom lost or destroyed identifying documents during their
flight, or never possessed any to begin with. Approximately 1 billion people globally lack identification; women are disproportionately
represented. Providing documentation results in greater access to aid services, employment, and personal empowerment. Through
fingerprinting and iris scans, many aid agencies now register refugees as they come through camps, allowing them to confirm their information
without need for prior documentation. Such a system can help prevent benefit fraud, whether from double-receipt of aid or by organizers who
take aid away from the populations in need. Biometric systems thus offer important oversight in the refugee aid industry. Nevertheless, the
history and implementation of biometrics raises some concerns. Its usage has typically been an
imperative for donor states rather than the aid agencies themselves. As the researcher Katja Jacobsen explained in
The Politics of Humanitarian Technology, large donors, like the United States, make their funding dependent on
the implementation of biometrics in the refugee registration process. However, the interests of these
donors are driven by security rather than aid, and governance of refugees’ biometric data remains
ambiguous: Which states own the data—those which host the refugees, or those who provide the
funds? Who is in charge of data protection? Which companies provide the biometric systems to aid
agencies and what is their level of control over the data?

These uniquely harm women for two reasons:

First is false matches
Polk 20 (Alexandria Polk, Presidential Management Fellow with the CFPB, recently
completed a rotation in USAID’s Technology Division as a Gender Advisor, MA from Johns
Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. 9/2/2020. “Big Brother Turns Its Eye
on Refugees”, Foreign Policy,
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/02/big-brother-turns-its-eye-on-refugees/. DOA:
3/27/2023) SAP
Beyond those questions, there is the risk of false matches. Biometric technology occasionally incorrectly
registers a refugee as already in the system. According to Jacobsen, previous testing of biometric systems was
small-scale, operating on “a few hundred entries to a database” with relative precision. Yet it is
unclear how well it works when the databases include millions of registered individuals. This concern
is doubled if the biometric technology itself is of poor quality or if the type of information requested
by donor states emphasizes security concerns rather than an accurate distribution of humanitarian
aid. Although false matching could harm all refugees, women in particular could suffer. They are often
already marginalized in their communities, and face issues in securing aid. If falsely matched, they
could face yet more hurdles to securing cash transfers, owning property, and accessing employment
opportunities in a dignified way. A test of American faces conducted by the National Institute of
Standards and Technology shows that women were less likely to be recognized by facial recognition
systems than men. This is doubly true for women of color, as shown by the same test in which “the highest
false positives are in American Indians, with elevated rates in African American and Asian populations.” Further, as Lindsey Kingston explains
in the 2018 book, Digital Lifeline, women, especially single mothers, may serve as heads of households and
primary caregivers, duties which may prevent them from claiming aid in person. Beyond that, Kingston explains,
women are most likely to face injuries such as cooking burns, which could disrupt fingerprint
identification required to receive assistance.

Without aid, women are hit the hardest in humanitarian crises

World Economic Forum 22 (World Economic Forum, an international non-governmental
and lobbying organization. 5/25/2022. “Why we need more female voices while
addressing humanitarian crises”, World Economic Forum,
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/05/listening-to-female-voices-can-stop-humani
tarian-crises-harming-women-s-and-girls-health/. DOA: 4/6/2023) SAP
We have also watched in real time as a humanitarian crisis has developed in the Ukraine, causing forced displacement, a health crisis and food
and economic instability. Almost 13 million Ukrainians have been forced to leave their homes due to the invasion of the country earlier this year.
The disruption of health care services Women
and girls around the world face barriers to accessing quality health
care even in the absence of a humanitarian crisis. This is especially true of those living in rural and
low-income areas. The COVID-19 pandemic and other humanitarian crises greatly increase those
barriers. One barrier is the scarcity of quality health care services. According to OCHA, mothers and
children are most at risk where there are diminishing health care services. The World Health
Organization reports that in 2021 approximately 90% of countries had disruptions to basic health
services. Specifically, the International Rescue Committee expects crises to cause over 90% of
Afghanistan’s health clinics to close. Humanitarian crises interrupt the provision and usage of sexual
and reproductive health care and information leaving women and girls vulnerable, according to the
UN Population Fund (UNFPA). It has found that maternal deaths in 35 countries facing humanitarian
crisis or fragile conditions represent around 61% of all maternal deaths globally. This means that
maternal mortality in these countries was 1.9 times higher than the global estimate. Gender-based violence is
referred to as a “shadow pandemic” – most recently in relation to its increase during the COVID-19 pandemic. While people were confined to
their homes, preventive, protective and responsive services were discontinued or more difficult to use. This is shadow pandemic also occurs
during other humanitarian crises. Specifically, an increase of gender-based violence has been noted during natural disasters and it is also used as
a weapon of war.

Second is exploitation
Polk 20 (Alexandria Polk, Presidential Management Fellow with the CFPB, recently
completed a rotation in USAID’s Technology Division as a Gender Advisor, MA from Johns
Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. 9/2/2020. “Big Brother Turns Its Eye
on Refugees”, Foreign Policy,
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/02/big-brother-turns-its-eye-on-refugees/. DOA:
3/27/2023) SAP
Another problem is data usage. As more humanitarian aid agencies adopt biometric technology, a “dictatorship of no alternatives,” a phrase
coined by Shoshana Zuboff in her 2018 book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, is emerging. Refugees
have little say in the
usage of their personal data. It is hard to say that refugees have provided real consent when they turn
over biometric data because there aren’t other good choices. That’s especially true of women, who
may face norms preventing them from speaking out. In fact, systems of biometric registration continue
to be discriminatory even when women do speak against its usage, as seen in the case of veiled
Muslim women in Bangladesh. Women and girls reported that they were not consulted on biometric
identification systems and said that they felt disrespected and violated when their headwear was
adjusted during the registration process. Exploitation of the collected data is another concern.
Although significant data breaches of biometric management systems have yet to occur, the threat
remains, and exposure of sensitive biometric information would be catastrophic for refugee
populations. First, unlike PIN codes and passwords, personal physical identifiers cannot be changed.
Should data be stolen, fingerprints and iris scans would remain exposed. Given that many biometrics
programs are accessible to state governments, it is unclear who has control over and access to
refugees’ biometric information. A recent article by Dave Nyczepir outlines the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security’s decision to move its cache of biometric data from U.S. citizens and foreign nationals to
Amazon Web Services GovCloud. Since UNHCR sends refugee information to DHS, that means refugees’ data will be on
the cloud as well. For women who are fleeing persecution or gender-based violence, breaches of this
information can be deadly. In short, although biometrics have improved the efficacy of refugee registration and identification, there
are still several risks, especially for refugee women. Recognizing those problems would be a good first start to improving the systems in
question.

Johnson and Campbell 20 continue (Madelyn Johnson, intern for the Middle East
Institute’s Cyber Cyber Program, Eliza Campbell, Co-director of the Middle East
Institute’s Cyber Cyber Program, Researcher in technology and human rights at the
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. 8/25/2020. “Home
Biometrics, refugees, and the Middle East: Better data collection for a more just future”,
MEI@75,
https://www.mei.edu/publications/biometrics-refugees-and-middle-east-better-data-col
lection-more-just-future. DOA: 3/27/2023) SAP
Since the advent of biometric data use in the field of refugee aid, the UNHCR has amassed detailed information about the populations it serves,
sometimes including information on movement that is gathered when they receive food and cash assistance at various locations. This can help
execute the UNHCR’s protection mandate, but the threat of data breaches adds significant risks. In 2016, for example, a third party was able to
enter a Red Rose software platform and access the personal information of over 8,000 families receiving humanitarian assistance in West Africa.
This incident is a reminder that the data stored by the UNHCR has significant value, and is at risk of exploitation. In
addition to threats
from outside actors looking to exploit or profit from refugees, biometric data may be sought by
governments under the guise of protecting national security. The European Commission’s EURODAC
database, for example, regularly collects information on hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers
entering the EU, documenting fingerprints, gender, and other identifying information. Although
initially protected from third-party actors, in 2015 the information became accessible to Europol
among other agencies. The UNHCR faces a similar risk of data meant to help vulnerable populations
being used for law enforcement purposes. In 2014, Lebanon requested access to UNHCR’s biometric
database, claiming that “Any country in the world has ownership of data being collected on its
territories.” The request underscored not only the vulnerability of refugees and their lack of control
over their own biometrics, but also larger questions about potential clashes between national
sovereignty and international control of humanitarian data and operations. In the case of Lebanon’s
request, for example, Syrian refugees reported concern about their personal information reaching the
Syrian government, with some stating that they planned to refuse iris scans, even if it meant forfeiting food and cash aid from the
UNHCR and other agencies. Real fears accompany the use of biometric data because, in the hands of host
governments, the information could result in criminal scrutiny, persecution, or even a threat to life. In
a move reflecting these risks, Rohingya refugees staged a three-day work strike in 2018 over concerns
about the use of their biometric data. Many feared that the UNHCR would share their information with the Myanmar
government, further endangering their lives. The UNHCR attempted to assuage their fears, assuring refugees that the data was only used to
distribute services in Bangladesh, but mistrust over the use of data remains. In 2019, the World Food Programme (WFP) partially suspended aid
to Yemen due to disagreement with the Houthis over the control of biometric data, leaving 850,000 Yeminis without critical support. The
Houthis opposed the collection of the biometrics, claiming that it was illegal for the WFP to control the data.

This happened with the Taliban

Magee 22 (Tamlin Magee, Author at Raconteur. 5/3/2022. “Are biometrics as safe as we
think?”, Raconteur,
https://www.raconteur.net/technology/are-biometrics-as-safe-as-we-think/. DOA:
4/6/2023) SAP
But there may be hidden dangers to relinquishing our biological information to the digital sphere, and what feels frictionless today could come
at a cost in future. Take
the US’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. It didn’t just leave citizens to the
mercy of the Taliban: it left their biometric data up for grabs too. In 2007, the US trialled a tool there called Handheld
Interagency Identity Detection Equipment (HIIDE), using these devices to record fingerprint, iris, and facial data. Initially developed to locate
insurgents, US forces extended their use of HIIDE to those who cooperated. Ultimately,
the personal data of more than 1.5
million Afghans was matched against a database of biometric data and stored in a centralised
repository. When this fell into the wrong hands, it revealed indisputable information about the people
the US had worked with and put them at risk. These databases, whether created intentionally or as accidental by-products,
are one of the chief issues of biometric security, says Britain’s Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner, Fraser Sampson. “At a very
simplistic level, biometrics is about measuring and matching. And for matching, a biometric needs a comparator,” Sampson says. “A collection of
comparators is a database. Essentially, if you retain biometric material, you’ve created a database.” There are many issues with centralised
databases; one is that they’re prone to leaking. When you throw biometric data into the mix, complications that are reminiscent of humanity’s
darkest moments come to the fore. In the field of biometric surveillance, says Sampson, one person’s idea of protection may be another
person’s oppression. “While humanitarian uses of biometric identity can save lives, the same biometric data can be used for
domination and exploitation,” says Sampson. “It can be used to marginalise and persecute people on grounds of their race, ethnicity
and religious beliefs.” The benefits of biometrics – their uniqueness, their incontestable ties to real humans – are exploitable as their
weaknesses, too. The abilities of determined, capable hackers with resources should never be underestimated. While biometrics are generally
difficult to spoof right now – especially as, for many hackers, lower-effort attacks are more fruitful – what is true today may not be the case
tomorrow, as attackers leverage better computing and become more sophisticated. “Nobody I’m aware of has yet been able to demonstrate an
unhackable system,” Sampson says, “or an unreachable database. The stakes make it worth it, whether that’s hostile state activity or
reconnaissance, or commercial hacking. If there’s a commercial value to crack something, you can sell that.” As the use of biometrics increases
and converges, there will probably be fewer, but bigger, databases, if these trends continue – reducing the likelihood of breaches and error, but
potentially also increasing the impact should these leaks happen.