It’s trickier to handle an environment where promoting a health approach risks being hijacked by the right wing’s attempts to reduce access to birth control. Companies have an interest in marketing their products as the best solution to a problem. Anti-abortion groups want to push fertility tracking as the best way to manage reproductive health. But fertility awareness methods, particularly when used to prevent pregnancy, aren’t the best option for everyone.
Experts like Simmons want people to have more options and more choices around birth control and fertility management. Tech only helps, though, if the companies develop their products using rigorous science that contributes to our understanding of fertility. So far, that’s a mixed bag: companies like Clue and Natural Cycles have published data on their approaches and, because they’ve gone through the FDA authorization process, have some element of transparency about their function.
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