Abortion Rights and FemTech Products
Today on the 24th of June 2022, Americans held their breaths hoping that their right to abortion won’t be controlled by the government. Unfortunately, the supreme court overturned Roe v. Wade, meaning abortion will be banned across states by trigger laws and for some states, the situation remains uncertain. This will be huge for the femtech industry and here’s why…
Around 24% of femtech industry companies are serving to menstrual health and sexual wellness subsectors by 2021 Q4. Most commonly there are menstrual tracking apps that help women track their symptoms during their cycle. Thousands of women are dealing with PMS symptoms with the help of these apps, and communicate with their OBGYN doctors through data they collect on these apps.
These apps are not crucial for our health and sure, pen and paper will work just fine, however, there are huge benefits to using these apps: From built-in communities to giving guidance with their wellness.
These apps, which are designed to help women, can lead to major consequences with the Roe overturn. Because they hold huge data. To start with the first app that comes to mind in the industry Flo asks “Are you pregnant?” before onboarding the user.
Think of it, if the state can use this data to somehow suspect that you are changing locations or states to get an abortion. You may get arrested…
The main concern from now on will not be how intimate you data is, it will rather be how careful the app provider is with your data.
Because at the moment menstrual tracking app providers are free with who they are sharing your data as long as they are stating it in their privacy policy and notify you each time they make a change.
For example, in the previous year, it was discovered that Flo sold fertility information to third parties like Facebook and Google, while it’s specifically stated in their privacy policy that they are not selling data to third parties.
To be clear, I’m a true advocate for femtech products. I even develop a mobile app & wearable device that uses menstrual cycle data (Triwi) but I’m also a femtech product user. So let’s ask these questions from now on:
- Do you think these data might have been used for the abortion law campaigns like it did before in US selections?
- Will these nonmedical data (these data are not a result of a medical analysis or test) stored on these apps be considered as evidence in court?
- What will happen if you forget to enter your period a month? Does this mean you are pregnant?
- What can I do to ensure that my data is protected?
- Why is this data used by the app provider?
About Triwi
At Triwi we develop a wearable device to ensure women are doing their monthly self-breast check-ups and this device needs your menstrual cycle to suggest you a suitable time for self-check-up.
What is Triwi doing to ensure that users are safe?
- Most importantly, we have a personal data expert attorney office, Kavlak Law Firm, on our advisory board with equity, meaning we have a thought leader in the field that will prevent us from doing anything unethical and against the law
- Secondly, every step of the way, we explain why we ask every question to our users.
- Third, we give rights to any non-crucial data optional so that, if they don’t feel comfortable with our policies, users have the right to leave questions blank.
- Fourth, in the upcoming launch, we let our users use whatever app they trust (if they do trust our policy, they can still use our mobile application to store their data) with their menstrual data. We will build an integration with the industry leader apps and communicate with those apps instead of storing the data ourselves.
