Reproductive Health Care in Your Pocket

Getting contraception and abortion – or even trustworthy information about it – isn’t always easy. Some people live more than an hour away from the nearest clinic, and if they don’t have a car, that means finding a ride or scraping up enough cash for transit. Some people need childcare so they can go to an appointment. Some people (especially those living with their parents or a controlling partner) have to come up with an acceptable excuse just to leave the house, and a friend who will cover for them if necessary to make sure the excuse sticks. And now that COVID-19 is keeping a lot of us from just popping out to see a friend, making a stop on the way home from work, or even making a phone call in peace and privacy, it all seems a lot harder.

But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to get the information you need about reproductive health. As long as you’ve got a smartphone, you can send a text to an organization like Jane’s Due Process, which operates a text hotline to help teens and others come up with safe, practical strategies to access the care they need.

You can look things up on a website like AbortionPillInfo.org, which provides accurate, up-to-date details about abortion with pills and includes a confidential portal for submitting questions to trained counselors. (If you’re worried that someone might look at your browser history on your phone, get the DuckDuckGo app, a privacy-focused browser that makes it fast and easy to delete your history.)

And speaking of apps, check out our Euki reproductive health app to get information about everything from sex and consent to all the different kinds of birth control and a step-by-step guide to self-managed abortion with pills. It also includes a calendar where you can track your period, your sex life, your mood, and anything else you need to follow to know what your body’s up to. And because none of that is anyone’s business but your own, the data is stored only on your phone, with password protection and even a fake screen if someone asks you to unlock it and hand it over. It’s available in English and Spanish for both iOS and Android.

Stay safe – whatever that means for you right now – and come talk to us on Twitter or Facebook if you want to!