Looks like an episode The Handmaid’s Talebut everything is real. We keep saying this to ourselves only to see the similarities to the dystopian series get bigger and bigger. Now, after the decision of the Supreme Court to overturn the sentence Rowe vs. Wade With the federal right to abortion abolished, women are wondering what Post Row’s life will be like. They organize a run for cover, knowing that in many states (half, analysts say) abortion will soon become illegal or be severely restricted. Meanwhile, as a first step, they remove menstrual apps from their phones.

Yes, the reason is that you can imagine: they are afraid that the state will have access to data about their body, their cycle and, therefore, their possible pregnancy and their possible abortion. This trend already started last month when the Supreme Court draft was leaked, and now that the decision is upheld inThe advice is not to enter your cycle data into an app that can track it and then provide it as evidence.. Unfortunately, this is not pure science fiction: Guardian, in a state where abortion is a crime, the prosecutor’s office can request the information that these applications collect during the investigation (by the way, even if the company is based abroad). “If they are trying to prosecute a woman for an illegal abortion, they can sue any app on their device, including apps for monitoring the menstrual cycle,” Sara Spector, a Texas-based criminal lawyer and former prosecutor, told a British newspaper.

According to a 2019 survey published by the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly a third of American women use an app to track their menstrual cycle. The fact is that they are convenient, they make life easier by helping to plan things, especially for those who have severe menstrual pain. The problem is, as Spector explains, “each company has its own archiving and privacy policy for how they use and how long they keep data.” Again, according to Guardian, a 2019 study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) found that 79% of the health apps available on the Google Play Store regularly shared user data and were “far from transparent”. There have also been specific instances of menstrual apps sharing data about women with other companies without users knowing. At this point, it’s really hard to trust that you’re in good hands and you should check the privacy policy all the time.

Choice organization Planned Parenthood encourages people to use their Spot On app.. “People who want to track their cycles and monitor their fertility can always remain anonymous using the Spot On app without creating an account,” the statement said. “So the data will only be stored locally on the phone and can be deleted at any time by uninstalling the app.” The main problem, however, is always the same: we cannot trust anyone, we cannot be sure that someone wants to profit from women’s bodies or restrict them or control them in one way or another.