Over 40 Democratic members of Congress have requested Google to cease collecting and storing “unnecessary” location data, fearing that it may be used to track down and punish individuals who have had abortions.

Members of Congress, headed by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), and including well-known progressive legislators such as Ayanna Pressley, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, issued a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Tuesday.

The letter states, “We believe that abortion is health care,” added, “We will fight tooth and nail to ensure that it remains recognized as a fundamental right, and that all people in the United States have control over their own bodies. That said, we are concerned that, in a world in which abortion could be made illegal, Google’s current practice of collecting and retaining extensive records of cell phone location data will allow it to become a tool for far-right extremists looking to crack down on people seeking reproductive health care.”

Geofence data is only available with a court-issued order, but with over 20 states prepared to criminalise abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned, it’s becoming increasingly likely that such a warrant might be used to target anybody visiting an abortion provider.

To avoid this, the letter’s signatories demand that Google rethink its location data collecting procedures so that device data is only gathered in aggregate rather than individually, and that it is not kept by the corporation for longer than necessary.

The letter also compares Google’s location data policy to Apple’s choice to keep location data for a shorter period of time, claiming, “Americans who can afford an iPhone have greater privacy from government surveillance of their movements than the tens of millions Americans using Android devices.”

The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project’s executive director, Albert Fox Cahn, applauded the Congressional letter, saying that Google should erase its location data or be “complicit in criminalising abortion.”

As Cahn said, “It’s not enough for tech firms to say they’re pro-choice, they have to stop collecting data that puts pregnant people at risk.”

Added, “There’s no way for Texas to station state police at every out-of-state abortion clinic, but with data from Google and other companies, they don’t need to. If tech giants don’t act soon, we’ll see pregnant people seeking abortion care out of state, only to come home to an arrest warrant.”

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