Well yeah, that’s how it’s always been.
As if women always have the ability to “insist” like that. As if knowing your partner was all it took to not get pregnant or an STD from them. As if learning how and why to use a condom was taught in schools and/or at home so that the knowledge of how and why to use them was universally understood.
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Because people should have the right to choose, both men and women. Some people are allergic to latex as well.
Nobody is saying this is the best course of action. This is a dramatic extravagant move designed to point out the difficulties people have when trying to find their best course of action that they have chosen.
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I’m all for apps like this as long as they provide lots of information on the various kinds of contraception. bcsizemo is correct to point out that the side effects can be as serious as being on antidepressants and should be doctor monitored.
As someone with endometriosis, I’ve been on many different contraceptives to help control my condition. I have yet to experience one that had no annoying side effects. Lupron was the worst - it was like being thrust overnight into full menopause complete with mood swings, night sweats, hot flashes, etc.
I am thankful everyday that I live in a country where I don’t have to work around the system to access birth control. It does bother me a little that some doctors are too quick to prescribe contraception to any teenage girl for everything from depression to pimples without fully disclosing all the pros and cons of doing so.
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I wonder if this app leaves an icon on the home page of the device. Or if uninstalled, it leaves lots of fingerprints that it was once there.
My thinking is of a fictional seventeen year old girl who installs this app, then her abusive uncle/cousin/stepfather/other guardian sees it and beats the crap out of her. Repeatedly. Or, the app leaves traces of itself on her device when uninstalled, with the same results.
Ideally, the services delivered by this app would be better if they could be delivered via a secure, private mobile browser experience. All the same features/services could be there, including video chat, but once concluded, it would leave no mention that it was done. No cookies, no cached files, no email welcoming her to her new Planned Parenthood online account, nothing.
Now, who was that, that posted pics of neon colored condoms? Seriously? I can see it now: Same fictional 17 year old, handing one of those to stepdad. Right.
But I guess that’s not really the scenario that the article was talking about, but rather those like Jill Atilano, the happy mom pictured at the park with her two kids.
Former high school teacher here. Teenagers lock their phones, probably more often than adults. They are very savvy to snooping adults.
I certainly wouldn’t put anything past them(these are the people who try yet another bill of attainder against Planned Parenthood every few months, Article 1, section 9, US Constitution to the contrary after all… Not to mention the shootings and such); but I suspect that they’ll have some difficulty.
Not so much because of principled upholding of the right to accessible birth control; but because these apps are ‘medical’ only in the sense that they are interfaces for finding and talking to doctors: my insurance company’s web site has something almost identical(albeit less convenient and clunkier; because this is an insurance company) for looking up ‘in-network’ people so that I have no excuse for using ones that cost them more money.
To actually ban this sort of app, you’d either have to make searching for/communicating with doctors electronically illegal in some broad way; which would be unlikely to go over well; or ban doctors from issuing prescriptions without X in-person visits, which would be…unlikely…to be popular with anyone who has ever phoned in a refill request. The DEA does turn the screws on some drugs in terms of how they can be prescribed, quantities, etc; but even their…limited…empiricism in the realm of epidemiology would be stretched thin in claiming that crazed progesterone junkies were hitting the pill mills to score more fuel for their terrifying addiction menace.
I don’t wish to imply that team ‘family values’ won’t whine like hell and attempt to push back as deviously as they can; but unless they can drum up some total nonsense about the safety profile of taking oral contraceptives without having a weekly blood draw and full endocrine workup, or progesterone being a precursor to super-bath-salts, banning ‘consult a doctor about a matter that doesn’t require physical tests electronically’ won’t be terribly popular, since it’ll make pretty much every non-OTC medication markedly more expensive and less convenient to use, unless it’s already one of the crazy dangerous or suitably addictive ones.
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