Summary:

What happens when the government has the tools to track where we go, what healthcare we seek, and what we do with our own bodies?
Join NACDL and the O’Neill Institute at Georgetown University on December 4, 2026, for a day-long summit examining the rapidly evolving intersection of government surveillance, bodily autonomy, reproductive and gender-affirming healthcare, and criminalization after Dobbs.
The summit will bring together leading legal scholars, advocates, journalists, and experts to examine how information about our bodies, healthcare, and movements can become tools of investigation, regulation, and prosecution.

Sessions will explore:
• The surveillance state after Dobbs and the changing constitutional and privacy landscape;
• Automatic license plate reader surveillance, including the Texas case in which police searched a nationwide camera network for a woman who had obtained an abortion;
• Surveillance of transgender patients and healthcare providers and its connection to broader efforts to monitor and control bodily autonomy;
• The Comstock Act and federal regulatory authority, including efforts that could restrict abortion access nationwide without Congress enacting a new abortion ban;
• Federal health surveillance and government collection and use of sensitive reproductive-health information;
• When Pregnancy Outcomes Become Evidence: Mental Health, Intent & Criminalization, including how symptoms of a serious psychiatric condition can be interpreted as evidence of criminal intent
• Pregnancy and incarceration, including the unique threats to bodily autonomy and access to healthcare for people in custody.

Throughout the day, speakers will consider a central question: How far can the government go in watching, identifying, regulating, and ultimately criminalizing people because of what happens to—and what they choose to do with—their own bodies?

LOCATION: Georgetown University, 500 1st Street NW, 9th Floor
DATE: December 4, 2026
TIME: 8:00 am - 6:00 pm ET
COST: FREE (registration is required)
CLE Credit: Up to 8.0 credits (where approved)

Agenda

The program agenda and faculty are subject to change.

Friday, December 4, 2026
8:00 am	Registration, Breakfast & Opening Remarks NACDL + O’Neill Institute
9:00 am	The Surveillance State After Dobbs TBD
10:00 am	Tracked Across State Lines: ALPR Surveillance & Abortion Author/reporter of the Texas ALPR investigation — the story about a Texas officer searching a nationwide license-plate-camera network for a woman who obtained an abortion
11:00 am	Trans Surveillance & Bodily Autonomy Alejandra Caraballo
12:00 pm	Lunch
1:00 pm	The Comstock Act, Federal Power & Nationwide Abortion Restrictions Sara Ainsworth, If/When/How
2:00 pm	Federal Health Surveillance: Who Has Your Health Data? Carmel Shachar
3:00 pm	When Pregnancy Outcomes Become Evidence: Mental Health, Intent & Criminalization TBD
4:00 pm	Pregnant While Incarcerated: Bodily Autonomy Behind Bars Pregnancy Justice, Kulsoom Ijaz, WICD Committee
5:00 pm	Closing Remarks NACDL + O’Neill Institute

Faculty

Coming soon...

Code of Conduct

NACDL endeavors to foster a working, learning, and social environment free of harassment, discrimination, intimidation, and insult. To that end, NACDL has adopted a Code of Conduct for Affiliated Persons that applies to all attendees and participants of any kind at all NACDL sponsored events.

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