Google has announced that it will automatically remove information about users who visit abortion clinics or other places that could trigger legal problems following the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade.

This has opened the door for states to ban the termination of pregnancies.

The company behind the internet’s dominant internet search engine and the Android software that powers most of the world’s smartphones outlined the new privacy protections in a Friday blog post.

As well as automatically deleting visits to abortion clinics, Google also cited counselling centres, fertility centres, addiction treatment facilities, weight loss clinics and cosmetic surgery clinics as other destinations that would be erased from an individual’s location history.

Users have always had the option edit their location histories on their own, but Google will now proactively do it for them as an added level of protection.

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“We’re committed to delivering robust privacy protections for people who use our products, and we will continue to look for new ways to strengthen and improve these protections,” Jen Fitzpatrick, a Google senior vice president, wrote in the blog post.

This comes amidst escalating pressure on tech companies such as Google to do more to shield personal information from government authorities and outsiders through digital services and products

The calls for more stringent privacy controls were triggered by the US Supreme Court’s recent decision overturning the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that legalised abortion.

That reversal could make abortion illegal in more than a dozen states, raising the spectre that records about people’s location, texts, searches and emails could be used in prosecutions against abortion procedures or even for medical care sought in a miscarriage.

Like other technology companies, Google each year receives thousands of government demands for users’ digital records as part of misconduct investigations.

Google says it pushes back against search warrants and other demands that are overly broad or appear to be baseless.