Police in the United Kingdom are using data from period tracking apps and mass spectrometry tests conducted on blood, placenta, and urine to investigate patients who have had “unexplained” miscarriages.
Though abortion is legal in the UK, there are TRAP laws in place requiring certain conditions to be met first, paramount of which is that two separate doctors need to agree that the patient meets the criteria of the 1967 Abortion Act before any treatment can go ahead. Self-managed abortion is a criminal offense with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment in the UK, as is any abortion performed after the pregnancy has progressed passed 23 weeks and six days, unless the patient is at risk of serious physical harm or death, or the fetus has severe developmental anomalies.
Hey, people who menstruate! Don’t use software that leaks your period. There are clean, open source alternatives for your Android or Apple phone.
A Data protective App funded by the German government. Take that, Brits!
As if we needed more to be depressed about, what a mess our country now is. I can see why people immigrate.
Emigrate, maybe?
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Shame it was written for an old ass version of Android or I’d happily switch.
E: Idk why this is getting downvoted. I can’t install it from the Play Store because the app hasn’t been updated. Why is that controversial? 😅
Maybe their GitLab has the latest version? Sometimes open source apps will release first on their own repo before it gets pushed to external app repos.
I’ve always been a bit wary of apps which haven’t been released to the app store (maybe I’m overly paranoid!), so I’m just gonna stick with my crappy spreadsheet for now instead, until it gets updated. Appreciate the suggestion though :)
this sounds so fucking dystopian…
Soon, tampons will have wifi so they can send your data to the govt, and then they’ll know you’re pregnant before you even do.
DNA matching too, to make sure you don’t pollute the data.
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Amazing how many governments are interested in making sure babies happen - to the point of sounding alarms.
What do they know that they’re not telling? Is the pollution so bad that we’ve wiped ourselves out biologically?
The birth rate is dropping almost everywhere and that’s bad for capitalism
All nations that receive the benefits of the industrial revolution, followed by increased education, medicine, resources, and stability seem to trend to a demographic transition. The net result is a stable, and usually falling, population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition
They talk about this as if it’s mysterious. Not actually the fact that the working world is still based on one parent works and the other stays at home (offering their life in sacrifice to the system and providing the next generation for free, but I digress) but both parents HAVE to work to survive because the cost of living is through the roof. Child care costs too much, almost entirely wiping out one parents wage. And they could choose to offer incentives or address the reasons for the low birth rate, they know the reasons. But no, fear, criminalisation, those work better, as tools, to keep the chattel in line.
Aging populations are feared.
They allowed a human grade extinction event and now they’re got second thoughts? How… big brained monkey that sounds.
Self abortion can kill you. British law is made to protect you from yourself. Go to the doctor and everything will be fine. And free. And without you bleeding to death in your flat.
That doesn’t really seem to relate to the story at hand.
Women’s reproductive rights are a complex issue. On the one hand there’s killing babies; on the other there’s giving women a choice.
Tough call.
E: some of the PMs I’m getting for repeating this are absolute gold.
E2: we’re all going to hell
I personally prefer killing babies, it is more eco friendly.
I love how my joke went down as well as a foetus down the toilet
Fetuses are not babies.
Yeah, it’s a very old joke so doesn’t really make sense.
Much like women’s rights.
“Killing babies”… how ignorant that sounds.
Maybe you should tell that to the comedian who wrote the joke 30 years ago
Oh. Okay. Sure. Good head’s up.
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And the UK goverment really REALLY wants to have backdoors put into every kind on encryption.
Well, I’m sure the two aren’t related.
Sadly, I’m genuinely shocked at how many people have said things like “I got nothing to hide” when it comes to even basic intrusion of privacy by governments. It’s that kind of thinking that makes authorities think such actions like this should be tolerated.
Wow, that’s not maliciously intrusive at all. Big Brother is hard at work over in jolly old fuck that noise.
Wow, you never hear the UK mentioned as a place with abortion restrictions, but they have life in prison as a hypothetically administerable sentence for it, if done the wrong way.
Technically abortion is illegal. There has to be a medical reason for the abortion. In practice a Doctor would consider not wanting to be pregnant would make an abortion necessary. Practice and society expectations differ from the actual law.
This would suggest no prosector would bring charges against anyone, as it wouldn’t be in the public interest. So the police shouldn’t wast resources on it.
There has also been a rise in abortions lately. It appears to be down to misinformation online about contraception.
They should really get the de facto law written up officially, then.
Yes, but it costs political capital for very little gain. People won’t see it as a pro-abortion move. But anti-abortion people will see it as a pro-abortion move.
The UK doesn’t have the same public debate about abortion as we see in the USA. However, there is a quiet contingent of anti-abortion politicians.
The conservatives won’t move against them. The Tory strategy has been to embrace all positions to the right of them that get any steam. It’s seen them move from being the party bring the UK into the EU to leaving it. Being responsible for the the creation of the ECHR to calling for its end. If the Tories made this change in legislation they would anger the the right of their party. This would cause them to flip position back to where we are now. The total result would have them lose moderate votes that would no longer trust them with women’s health care.
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But my cage is so comfy and I’ve just got everything the way I like it.
Seriously though, I am too scared of jail to fight back
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I heard a good news article on unexplained miscarriages on NPR last week.
There’s a correlation between having a healthy baby and the volume of the placenta. Small placentas result in loss.
Which makes sense, the placenta is passing all the oxygen and nutrients to the baby, if it fails to size up, the baby is starved of nutrients and… well…
The doctor who invented the process to measure placental volume is getting the usual pushback from established medicine though. :(
Worth a listen if you have time:
https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/placenta-pregnancy-loss/
Almost all miscarriages are unexplained. Because research into health issues that primarily affect women is still in the fucking dark ages.
I had a friend who suffered multiple miscarriages (including one that wouldn’t complete itself and almost required surgical intervention because she was bleeding so badly - a procedure that her home state of Ohio is trying to ban now because it’s the exact same procedure that is used in
electricelective abortions.After so many losses they finally figured out that her progesterone levels were extremely low and supplemented progesterone the next time she got pregnant. She now has a healthy baby boy as a result.
Medicine doesn’t even have solutions for so many of these problems, and half the government wants to take away one of the few tools available to us to keep women alive and healthy.
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It’s called data poisoning. I run AdNauseum and TrackMeNot which both do something similar but I’m shocked at the lack of data poisoning software development.
Hiding your data can be hard but filling your profile with junk is trivial by comparison.
I suspect there is plenty of data poisoning software development. However, most of it is private development for use in the lucrative business of click farming.
The World Federation of Advertisers estimates that ad fraud (which is data poisoning with extra steps) accounts for 10-30% of clicks, globally.
I guess the question is why isn’t there more public development? Why doesn’t EFF add this to privacy badger?
I am a CIS male and run the Flo app just to mess with their stats and tracking. You wouldn’t believe how often my period is off!
I’ve never used an app to track, but as a teen my periods were so inconsistent that they would probably think I was pregnant and miscarrying every 3 months. There were times I didn’t bleed for 3 months then bled for 2, for years. This led me to starting birth control years before I ever had sex for the first time. I definitely would have been on some watchlist if that took place today.
Luckily, after years of trying to stop birth control (and going right back into that weird bleeding cycle every time! >:[ wtf body) my new doctor agreed to do a hysterectomy! It was just recently done, so I’m still recovering, but I’m so fucking happy I never have to deal with periods and bc pills ever again!
Sorry for the novel lol
Congratulations! I’m wicked happy for you, Internet Stranger :) and hope you a smooth recovery.
Same! I had a pregnancy scare a few weeks ago, but I’m back on my period again with my nonexistent uterus. Phew.
I bled 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and 21st of October. I plan on doing it backwards this month. My cup and non-existent uterus runneth over. I’m thinking of having a pregnancy scare next month sometime, just in time for the holidays.
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Ah yes, just another day of people living their best lives in the free world.
100% nonsense if you apply some logic. British police have 0 time or budget to be investigating this. If someone stole my wallet while I was standing in front of a police officer they wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it
By all means don’t use software that shares your personal information with anyone but also don’t waste time getting het up by this article
Orwell was right about that plce
