Back in May, 404 Media published a bombshell report: Texas police tried to track down an abortion patient using an automatic license plate reader (ALPR), accessing more than 83,000 cameras across the country. The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office told reporters this wasn’t a criminal investigation but a missing person case, claiming the search “was about her safety.” Even the ALPR company, Flock, jumped in to say it was “unequivocally false” that the search was about abortion, calling it “clickbait-driven reporting.”

To no one’s surprise, they were full of shit: New reporting from 404 Media and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) confirms that police were trying to locate this woman with the goal of prosecuting her, after opening a “death investigation” into her abortion. After journalists took notice, police tried to cover their tracks.

Perhaps worst of all, this investigation was prompted by the woman’s abusive partner—a man who threatened her at gunpoint before turning her in to police over her abortion.

There are a lot of moving parts here, so we recommend you read the full (excellent, chilling) reporting from EFF and 404 Media. But here are the key takeaways:

This was never about “safety.” Johnson County Sheriff Adam King told reporters, “Her family was worried that she was going to bleed to death, and we were trying to find her to get her to a hospital.” But an incident report and affidavit show the case was a “death investigation” for a “non-viable fetus.” The abortion had also taken place two weeks earlier, making it unlikely they were concerned about her immediate health or safety. (As Elizabeth Ling, Associate Director of Legal Services at If/When/How told us, “There is no good reason to use 83,000 cameras to track down someone after they had an abortion.”)

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This was always about punishment. King claimed the woman “was not under investigation at any point.” But police collected evidence related to the woman’s abortion—like text messages, photos, and the envelope her abortion pills arrived in. They also went to the district attorney’s office about prosecuting the woman, only to be told Texas law wouldn’t allow it.

Police tried to cover their tracks. King told reporters “there was no big conspiracy there to be the abortion police.” But after the story hit the press, his office retroactively created a “supplemental report” claiming they found a “large amount of blood” in the woman’s house and that they conducted the Flock ALPR search because they were worried about her safety.

Flock tried to PR their way out of the truth. Co-founder Garrett Langley slammed reporters in a blog post, claiming that it was “unequivocally false” that the case was about abortion. He later told Forbes this was a case of an “activist journalist,” and that police searched for the woman because there was concern from “a family member.” The only “family” mentioned in police records is the man who was later arrested for abusing her.

This isn’t about a few bad actors—but the predictable outcome of living in a reproductive police state bent on surveillance and punishment. And in a moment when pregnancy criminalization is on the rise, it’s vital we understand how this police state operates. After all, it was just last week that Pregnancy Justice reported there have been over 400 pregnancy-related arrests in the first two years after Dobbs.

A few important takeaways to remember as we see more of these cases come to light:

Police lie, especially about pregnancy-related arrests. What happened in Texas is just the latest example of why no one should uncritically take law enforcement at their word, certainly on cases involving pregnancy. Yet, all too often, that’s exactly what mainstream media does: We’ve seen it happen in cases like the one in South Carolina—where reporters claimed a woman used a “plastic bag to dump [her] stillborn baby.” The truth? She was arrested after miscarrying. We’ve seen it happen when major media outlets claimed a Nebraska teen jailed for her abortion said she “can’t wait to get the ‘thing’ out of her body”—words that actually came from a police officer.

As more women are arrested, it’s vital that media outlets and the general public understand that there is a huge difference between what police say and what actually happened. That’s doubly true when it comes to pregnancy, an issue that mostly male cops and prosecutors are generally ignorant on.

Ling from If/When/How tells AED she isn’t surprised the cops blatantly lied:

“[P]olice and prosecutors constantly lie to the media to punish women and protect themselves. It’s so important that journalists don’t treat police statements as facts. That is especially true as police continue to collaborate with abusers in their efforts to harass and torment their victims.”

And that leads us to the next critical reminder:

Abortion surveillance and bans are a tool of abusers. This case reached the attention of law enforcement because a woman’s vindictive, controlling partner tipped off police. That same man was later convicted for assaulting her: He hit her in the head with the butt of a gun, choked her, put the gun to her head, and demanded she “beg for [her] life.” Then he attempted to weaponize Texas abortion laws to further torture her.

What’s more, Sheriff Adam King himself was later arrested and indicted on multiple counts of sexual harassment. That’s right: In August, the cop in charge of this case turned himself in over charges related to sexual misconduct and retaliation against his victims. He’s accused of “unwelcome sexual advances” and pressuring his female employees to undress in front of him.

These are the kind of men who target women for their abortions. It’s a trend that AED warned about in our 2025 predictions: that the anti-abortion movement would increasingly rely on aggrieved and abusive men to do their dirty work. Since November, top Texas-based anti-abortion activists have bragged about recruiting men to sue over their partner’s abortions. Jonathan Mitchell is one of the anti-abortion attorneys leading that charge: after his client Marcus Silva sued his ex’s friends over her abortion, he tried to use the case to blackmail her into resuming a sexual relationship. At this point, even Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is reportedly recruiting men for this purpose.

This is what cruel, abusive men seeking to exert power over women do: harass them over their abortions. It’s a natural alliance. Anti-abortion states and abusive partners have a vested interest in forcing pregnancy and controlling their victims’ bodies.

Surveillance and data collection are just one tool—but they’re a scary one. Criminalization happens most often using traditional tricks-of-the-trade: things like people turning each other in, or police lying to the targets of their investigation. But digital surveillance is a growing problem, especially in post-Roe America. Here’s what Rin Alajaji, legislative activist at the EFF, told 404 Media:

“We’ve warned about this for over a decade now: when a single search can access more than 83,000 cameras across nearly the entire country, the potential for abuse is enormous. This makes it crystal clear that neither the companies profiting from this technology nor the agencies deploying it can be trusted to tell the full story about how it’s being used.”

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