How would the apps know if you had your period when expected or not? I would assume there’s no honor clause so you could just check off yeah, it came on X date if you weren’t planning to keep your pregnancy.
Well, there’s a completely irrelevant question! It’s always the girl’s fault. It can’t be the guy’s fault, because HE can’t get pregnant, see? That’s how God has it set up. It’s the women who want the babies! Geez, Louise, people, get a clue. 
[/sarcasm]
Many women use the apps to track their periods in the hopes of getting pregnant, to schedule sex on the days of ovulation.
The standard period frequency is every 28 days. I’m not familiar with the apps but perhaps one can personalize it with their own frequency. For example, if a woman’s period is every 35 days then that would be her expected menstrual cycle.
Yes, I understand that, and presumably the vast majority of women who were trying to get pregnant wouldn’t get an abortion unless there was an unforeseen complication. Those women who are trying of course would want an accurate record.
Its the other users I trying to figure out - it’s not as though you’re uploading photographic proof that your period came when it was supposed to so I’m not sure why women who intended to have an abortion and were worried that a gap in the app could be used against them wouldn’t just “lie” to the app and claim their period came even if it didn’t.
A long time ago, during the Vietnam draft, my female cousin wrote to her local draft board and, using only her last name and initials, refused to register for the draft. That was to make them go to the trouble of investigating this alleged draft dodger.
That parallels @Grestarian 's idea of men drawing fire from the abortion police.
Only if you had the foresight to do this ahead of time, if (as seems more likely) this was only done after the termination when you suspected you might be prosecuted, the timestamp stored online would show that, so could be more useful to the prosecution.
In fact IANAL but couldn’t they prosecute you for obstruction of justice in that situation?
Or, alternatively, track their periods in planning to NOT get pregnant.
Will women who use the “rhythm” method be next up for prosecution? Won’t somebody think of all those wasted ova? Who will stand up for them?
Question: Are their biometric period-tracking apps? Like an app you can download into your smart wristwatch that monitors subtle patterns in your body temperature or some other kind of biometric indicator?
Probably not. Many women experience spotting (light bleeding) very early in pregnancy, and they could plausibility say they were mistaken about their period starting when they marked it off on the app.
Maybe someone should more simply publish an open-source, verifiable app with the required functionality that, by design, cannot leak or harvest the users’ personal information. Or would it not be eligible for the big app stores?
And no doubt THAT would be deemed to be obstruction of justice, or furnishing virtual paraphernalia for the purpose of obstructing justice.
Might as well have that viewing-screen in every bedroom just like we saw in 1984.
A sex-permit will be required from the gummint prior to every sex act, specifying in particular the date, time, place, and manner of the planned event, and requiring a nominal processing fee (and possibly an “insertion tax”) and three-week waiting period for each permit.
But in this situation there is likely to be a lot of other evidence the abortion did occur, as (once a prosecution has been appealed all the way to the supreme court) the only defense will be to try and cast reasonable doubt that abortion took place. So the prosecutor will likely want to bury them under a ton of evidence rather than just rely on the one source.
I imagine similarly to white collar crime it might then actually be easier to show the record was altered with the intent of preventing prosecution. As in a white collar crime case there are innocent explainations for changing a piece of documentation after the fact, but if the prosecution can show you did it after you learned you are being investigated for fraud, they won’t likely help you .
It’s pretty messed up that this isn’t some hypothetical “bizarro world” question. issues like this are going to come up in court in the near future, unless a way is found to protect Roe-Wade.
Let’s assume the idea of it not being the government’s business is a ship that’s sailed.
The way this is used is for fishing expeditions. It’s not for a conviction, but to figure out who to look at deeper.
Let’s start by collecting a bunch of information held by third parties:
- location data for people who were near an abortion provider
- lists of people who bought short-stay round trip flights to states where abortion is legal
- people who use a period tracker and show a missed period
- people whose gas, charging, or toll road purchases suggest they drove to a state where abortion is legal
- search histories
- anything else?
Because all of that data is from third parties, the government can just buy it, like anybody else (there have been some court cases to point on this, but we won’t bother with that now, we’re thinking of the children).
Now do a bunch of cross referencing, and maybe even throw around some buzz terms like “AI” or “machine learning” and see what comes out. A nice ordered (by probability) list of people who are suspected of having an abortion, or helping somebody else have an abortion.
Now the female body inspectors have something to work with. Maybe for some of these it is even probable enough cause to convince a judge to issue a warrant for medical records or blood tests. Certainly some people will confess during a friendly talking to. Other suspects can just be harassed.
I’m pretty sure what I described is how lots of the “gang associate lists” and “no-fly lists” work.
I’m not sure how effective such tracking would be, god being the most prolific abortionist. (10-15% of all pregnancies, roughly equal to all other abortions).
I dunno, but if so I’d be interested in knowing how it checks the consistency of your cervical mucus. Actually, you know what, maybe I wouldn’t.
Long story short, when you do menstrual cycle tracking you’re usually including information about several physiological changes beyond what a smartwatch can easily access, in addition to things like basal body temperature.
I heard today on NPR that Plan B, levonorgestrel, the “morning-after pill” that prevents pregnancy after fertilization may have taken place, has a long shelf life. It can be purchased at pharmacies without a prescription. Some pro-choice activists are advising women to buy it now, before the SCOTUS ruling could make it illegal, and before the anti-choice enforcement frenzy gets rolling.
When you find a product you like, buy a lifetime supply because they will stop making it.
The credit card company would know I made a purchase from XYZ airlines. But why does the airline tell my CC company where I’m flying to/from?
You are right, and it did occur to me later. So, not only is the bank/credit company analysing its own transaction data to further exploit you, they are cooperating with data brokers, financial intermediaries, and merchants. Maybe there are some privacy limitations on data mining in some jurisdictions, but all it takes to bypass that is for the cardholder to sign up for a “loyalty scheme” (thus agreeing to whatever in the fine print) or for the merchant to pass along “level 3 data”
According to that link, the credit card company makes it worth their while!
This came up on Slashdot today. Its not related to abortion law but doing this for period tracking apps seems fairly plausible. Obviously, as other posters said, the majority of women who have a record of a pregnancy that suddenly ends would not have had an abortion. But similarly to this case, I’m sure the majority of people they found had searched for “how to burn down a house” weren’t prosecuted but they were able to find someone they could prosecute nonetheless:
Not that I think that is how the data will be used initially (it seems much more likely they will use it to add evidence to an existing case) but this kind of dragnet is in the works eventually I’m sure.
This one is a bit trickier. The police asked Google for a list of people who had searched for the address of the house that was burned down. Certainly more narrow than asking for everybody that searched “how to start a fire”, but still a very broad net. They could have arrested some random delivery driver.
Very relevant to this thread, what’s to stop police in a state where abortion is illegal asking Google for everybody who searched for an address of an abortion clinic in nearby states?