Police Said They Surveilled Woman Who Had an Abortion for Her 'Safety.' Court Records Show They Considered Charging Her With a Crime

· Oct 7, 2025 at 9:01 AM

Court records show that the narrative Flock and a Texas Sheriff's Office has told the public isn't the whole story, and that police were conducting a 'death investigation' into the abortion.

Police Said They Surveilled Woman Who Had an Abortion for Her 'Safety.' Court Records Show They Considered Charging Her With a Crime — Image: Flock, Collage by Jason Koebler

In May, 404 Media reported that the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office in Texas searched a nationwide network of Flock cameras, a powerful AI-enabled license plate surveillance tool, to look for a woman who self-administered an abortion. At the time, the sheriff told us that the search had nothing to do with criminality and that they were concerned solely about the woman’s safety, specifically the idea that she could be bleeding to death from the abortion. Flock itself said “she was never under criminal investigation by Johnson County. She was being searched for as a missing person, not as a suspect of a crime.”