Exhausted and disoriented, I storm to the shores of our dystopia to tell the good news: programs are now birth control.
On Monday, the period-tracking app Clue announced that it has received FDA approval to launch a digital birth control feature that will use statistical modeling to close tracking users’ menstrual cycles to help them better understand their chances of fertility.
Although it declined to name an exact price or launch date for the birth control, Clue – which currently has about 13 million users – noted that the feature would be considered a ‘premium’ feature.
The app will function as a version of the Fertility Awareness Methods for Birth Control, which typically uses key statistics, including start dates, body temperature, and changes in cervical mucus to predict when ovulation will occur. But unlike other FAM, Clue will rely on a single measure – your period for the beginning of your period – to project fertility. Using the so-called Bayesian modeling will synthesize the information to predict the datahigh risk “ window over a number of days of the user’s cycle, during which the probability of pregnancy is increased (there is also alow risk “ window). On high-risk days, users are advised to abstain from sex altogether or to use alternative contraceptives, such as condoms, to prevent pregnancy.
“It gets personalized over time,” said Clue chief medical officer Lynae Brayboy. told TechCrunch. “So, as the individual sets up his first cycle first day, we can personalize the window of their high-risk days versus their low-risk days.”
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Used correctly, Clue claims to be 92% effective in preventing unwanted pregnancies under ‘typical use’ and 97% effective under ‘perfect use’. This is the second time an app has used a statistical modeling method to gain FDA approval in U.S. markets: In 2018, the Natural Cycles app became the first, costing nearly $ 100 for a thermometer that users use every morning to body temperature could take.
Sometimes interchangeably referred to as “natural family planning” or “the rhythm method”, FAMs developed a bad reputation over time because I am, and I paraphrase here, homeopathic woo-woo nonsense that makes an educated guess out of fertility. In reality, however, the methods fixed efficiency rates when used properly, but also that users should remain vigilant, responsible and consistent – adjectives that may not describe the average 20-year-old user.
It is also noteworthy that sshortly after the release of Natural Cycles in 2018, the app was sued for allegedly causing 37 unwanted pregnancies in Sweden. And Clue, even by its own admission, is not for everyone: only individuals between the ages of 18 and 45 who have regular periods may use the app, and Audrey Tsang, CEO, said users who are not eligible , or those cycles that become too irregular will be locked out of the app after a while.
But while FAM’s is still far from a perfect science, it is also true that man influx of birth control education was so dominated by messages that are only abstinence those individuals with a period have become almost completely separated from the nature of their own fertility. While hormonal drugs such as the contraceptive pill and long-acting reversible contraceptives such as intrauterine devices (IUDs) work perfectly for some people, many others are forced to simply tolerate the methods – and the multitude of adverse side effects that often accompany them – in a world where few alternatives are considered legal.
It is a famous dilemma for anyone it gets a period, in it you are kind of damned if you do it and damn if you do not. The best advice, as always, is to just trust your gut and do what feels right.