Can an app really provide effective birth control?

Technology that tracks women’s fertility has been hailed as being more effective than the pill – and without side-effects. Is this a genuine revolution in sexual freedom?

When Apple launched their health tracking app in 2014 and didn’t include any features that allowed women to monitor their reproductive health the company was widely ridiculed. As critics pointed out women have been tracking their periods for hundreds of years – in many ways they were at the forefront of the quantified self movement. Apple corrected their blunder but it drew attention to the nascent group of start-ups who were developing apps that claimed to track a woman’s fertility.

Today, the choice is staggering, from Kindara – a free app that allows you to track all manner of fertility markers, from your body temperature to the appearance of your cervical fluid – to Ovia, which includes in-app purchases, and allows you to monitor your moods and periods as well as other metrics.

Not for nothing are fertility-based family planning methods known as 'Vatican roulette'

Continue reading... October 15, 2017 at 01:30PM