Women’s Fertility App Secretly Bankrolled By Anti-Abortion Activists: Report
A popular fertility app that helps women track their cycles to help them plan — or avoid — pregnancies is being quietly taken down by an anti-gay, pro-Catholic rights group. in reproductive for women, The Guardian reported.
While posing as a tool that helps women make reproductive choices, the app attacks some types of birth control as unsafe and unreliable, according to the newspaper. That can prevent women from using certain reliable methods, which can result in unwanted pregnancies.
Femm app literature questions the safety and effectiveness of hormonal birth control, such as pills or patches, which are currently among the more reliable birth control methods for women, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The tracking cycles, promoted by the Femm app, are the less reliableAccording to the CDC.
The Femm app, run by the not-for-profit Femm Foundation, has been downloaded some 400,000 times by users worldwide, including in the US
Among the private donors supporting the app are the Chiaroscuro Foundation, a charity backed by Catholic hedge funder and anti-abortion activist Sean Fieler, a big supporter of Vice President Mike Pence, The Guardian reported. The foundation has donated $1.79 million to Femm developers over the past three years, according to the newspaper. Funders’ anti-abortion beliefs are not communicated to app users.
The app also collects information about sex and menstruation from users.
Two of the app’s medical advisors are not licensed to practice in the US, according to The Guardian.
Anna Halpine, CEO of the Femm Foundation, told The Guardian that the beliefs of the group and its funders are irrelevant because the app “does not deal with the question of abortion.” Femm has “never commented on the abortion issue,” he said.
Femm a posted long statement Thursday on its website responding to The Guardian article. It said donors “understand the importance of non-pharma” research and that Femm seeks to provide “more options” for women.
Watch the video above to see some of the challenges of cycle-tracking as an effective birth control method.
