Facebook Doesn't Need to Know When I Have Sex

I'm not going to lie: smartphones have changed my life. I don't miss appointments any more, because my phone reminds me when they are and when I have to leave. I don't get lost any more because my phone tells me where I am and gives me directions to where I'm going. I never forget my shopping list. I always know when the next bus is coming. I can even enter the lottery for Hamilton tickets while I'm waiting in line for coffee (although I haven't won…yet).

But would I use my phone to keep track of when I have PMS, when I have sex, and other things involving my reproductive health and fertility? Let's just say I've been skeptical about that after reading a bunch of stories about various apps that are basically selling data about their users to marketers who just want a better idea of who's more likely to buy their tampons or baby gear or vitamins. Or, worse, apps that are secretly funded by anti-abortion zealots who want to use your data to talk you out of using birth control.

Can you imagine your phone reminding you every day that your period is late when you don't actually want to be pregnant? Or mysteriously starting to get ads for diaper services a few months after a miscarriage? These things have happened to other people. They are not things that I want happening to me. 

My menstrual cycle, my orgasms, my partners, my moods, my contraceptive choices – those things are my business. I wouldn't dream of sharing them with strangers at Facebook or some church group. The idea that those strangers might be able to get that information without my even knowing about it gives me the screaming willies.

But I can tell my phone is about to change my life again, because Women Help Women just introduced an app called Euki that can track all kinds of things about sexual and reproductive health in one place without sharing it with anyone you don't want to, thank you very much. The information stays the heck on your phone, where you can protect it with a password and even set up a fake password that launches a fake screen in case you're worried about prying eyes in the offline world.

Women Help Women has always been all about giving people unbiased, up-to-date, accurate information. We've always had a secure portal where you can ask our counselors confidential questions and get discreet answers. We have a website all about self-managed abortion with pills. Euki is just one more way for us to support the idea that everyone deserves privacy, education, and control when it comes to their own body.