Politics and Period Tracking
We’re going to start out with some basic info on period tracking. And then we’ll get political.
⚠️ Content Warning: Abortion, rape, and incest.
The Period Tracking Part
Tracking your menstrual cycle can be helpful when you’re trying to conceive. You can see how long your cycles are and if they are regular or vary in length. It can also help you remember the first date of your last menstrual period when it comes time to figure out an approximate due date! When trying to conceive, it’s possible to track ovulation to find out when you may be most fertile. There are a variety of ways to do this, and you can read about them by clicking on the link below:
🔗 Calculating Your Monthly Fertility Window | Johns Hopkins Medicine
Tracking ovulation can help some people to feel more in control or to feel more proactive. For others, it makes the process more stressful. Do what works best for you!
But before you start tracking, I need to get political for a minute.
The Political Part
Many people use period tracking apps for many reasons. Maybe you’re trying to conceive and want to know when you’re ovulating or if your period is late. Maybe you’re trying to avoid pregnancy and want to make sure your period shows up on time. Maybe your method of birth control relies on tracking ovulation and avoiding fertile days. Maybe you have a medical issue and need to track your cycle. Maybe you’re taking a medication that’s contraindicated in pregnancy. Maybe you want to have a quick answer for any care providers asking for the date of your last menstrual cycle. Maybe you just want to know when to make sure you have period products on hand.
PERIODS ARE PERSONAL.
The specifics of your menstrual cycle is health and wellness information that should be private and protected. But it might not be if you’re using a period tracking app.
Your privacy is at stake for two reasons:
Overturning of Roe v. Wade
Apps can (and do) legally sell your personal data to third parties
The combination of these two issues is scary. In a post-Roe era, think about who might want access to specific information about an individual’s menstrual cycle. Concerning, right?
The article below does a great job of explaining more about these concerns and how these dots connect:
🔗 Is Your Data Safe in Period Tracking Apps? | Verywell Health
The overturning of Roe v. Wade is putting and will continue to put those who are able to get pregnant at risk. This includes people who:
Want to conceive
Are struggling to to conceive
Are thrilled to be pregnant
Don’t want to be pregnant right now
Don’t want to be pregnant again
Don’t want to be pregnant ever
Are pro-choice
Consider themselves pro-life
Could suffer negative physical and mental health effects from pregnancy
Victims of rape and incest
And more
OUR healthcare decisions are now being made by politicians who don’t have even the most basic understanding of the female reproductive system. We have lost OUR right to bodily autonomy to those who don’t have a grasp on the many nuanced reasons for ending a pregnancy. These reasons can be very simple. Or they can be agonizingly complicated. And when uninformed politicians (most of whom to not possess a uterus) limit the ability for medical professionals to properly care for pregnant and birthing people…. Cue the many unintended consequences that can and will cause unnecessary harm.
We should ALL have better protections on our personal data. We should ALL have the freedom to make decisions about our bodies and our pregnancies. But, right now, that isn’t the case for everyone.
And it’s not just period tracking apps. Text messages, search history, smartphone location data, emails, etc. could all be used to criminalize a person for what used to be a constitutional right.
Here’s an article that goes into more about about this:
🔗 Why Deleting Your Period Tracker Won’t Protect You | New York Times
AND….
Despite the HIPAA Privacy Rule, your health information could legally be disclosed by a health care provider to law enforcement in some cases. You can check this out (and learn more about HIPAA) at the link below:
To be clear, nothing about HIPAA changed. What changed is the safe and legal access to abortion in some states.
Need a printable period tracker? You can find one (and more) in my Free Resource Library.