Perceived Privacy Risk and Mitigation Post-Roe

Several years after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the landscape of reproductive privacy has become increasingly complex and precarious. As a growing portion of the population faces legal risk simply for being pregnant, questions remain about how individuals perceive and respond to these threats and how context-specific factors such as pregnancy risk, miscarriage experience, and state-level restrictions shape privacy behaviors. We surveyed 503 individuals capable of pregnancy who indicated at least some concern with their reproductive health privacy about those concerns and how they have evolved, as well as their awareness of legal risks and use of protective strategies. Most participants expressed high levels of concern and adopted a broad array of tactics, including VPNs, aliases, and incognito browsing. These behaviors were often deployed without clear threat prioritization, reflecting what we term a “layered approach.” Although context-specific factors (e.g., state restrictiveness, reproductive status) were associated with elevated concern, we observed no consistent link between these factors and the specific strategies adopted, highlighting a disconnect between specific risks and the strategies participants employed and suggesting limited or improvised threat modeling. We argue that heightened threat perception and situational urgency have diminished the explanatory power of traditional demographic predictors, such that context-specific vulnerability offers a more meaningful—if still complex—lens for understanding privacy behavior. In response, we call for a more adaptive and situationally grounded privacy research agenda capable of addressing this shifting legal, social, and technological terrain.