Menstruation apps: What happens to your data and how it can be used to criminalize abortion

Two investigations warn about how data collected through menstrual tracking apps can be used by governments to monitor people’s reproductive lives, and by companies to make a profit

Catalina Oquendo
SEP 13, 2025

What does the volatile global political environment have to do with the menstruation of millions of people? With whom do menstrual cycle apps share our medical data? And how can this information be used to criminalize women who choose to have an abortion?

More and more people are downloading menstrual tracking apps on their phones. Hence, these questions are becoming a major concern for researchers and academics. This is because the data stored in these apps is considered to be a “gold mine” for the market.

Continued; https://english.elpais.com/health/2025-09-14/menstruation-apps-what-happens-to-your-data-and-how-it-can-be-used-to-criminalize-abortion.html

USA – Is the ‘tech bro-ification’ of abortion here?

Repro workers and tech experts reveal startling gaps between the promises offered by abortion technologies and the realities facing abortion-seekers and support workers

by Nicole Froio and Jade Jasmine Hurley
June 11th, 2025

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, abortion tech has emerged as a potential solution for an increasingly prohibitive reproductive rights landscape…

This exclusive Prism investigation delves into the role of tech in reproductive health care, finding gaps in how abortion workers are served by tech initiatives, a clash between funding abortion tech and industry layoffs, and tension in how best to address the changing legal landscape for abortion. Interviews with a dozen reproductive health workers, tech specialists, abortion fund staff, and reproductive rights advocates further revealed a lack of investment in backend tools for abortion support workers navigating a progressively underfunded field.

Continued: https://prismreports.org/2025/06/11/abortion-tech-repro-workers/

11.06.2025

Commentary

abortion and tech

abortion and technology

abortion apps

abortion chatbot

Abortion Freedom Fund

Abortion Policy API

Aid Access

Amy Merrill

automated abortion finder

Carolina Abortion Fund

Cathy Torres

Cecile Richards

Charley app

crisis pregnancy centers

If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice

National Network of Abortion Funds

self-managed abortion

There’s a new surveillance state – and women are the target

Period tracking apps, car licence plate data and pregnancy registers are the latest tools experts warn are being harnessed to monitor women

By Harriet Barber, GLOBAL HEALTH REPORTER
7 October 2022

Surveillance data and technology are being exploited to stoke fear and prevent abortions in countries including the United States, China, Hungary and Poland.

Period tracking apps, car licence plate data and pregnancy registers are the latest tools activists warn are being harnessed to stop women using legal or geographic loopholes for terminations. All four countries have reversed abortion rights over the past two years.

Continued: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/women-and-girls/new-abortion-surveillance-state-keeping-tabs-women/