Police in the United Kingdom are using data from period tracking apps and mass spectrometry tests conducted on blood, placenta, and urine to investigate patients who have had “unexplained” miscarriages.

Though abortion is legal in the UK, there are TRAP laws in place requiring certain conditions to be met first, paramount of which is that two separate doctors need to agree that the patient meets the criteria of the 1967 Abortion Act before any treatment can go ahead. Self-managed abortion is a criminal offense with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment in the UK, as is any abortion performed after the pregnancy has progressed passed 23 weeks and six days, unless the patient is at risk of serious physical harm or death, or the fetus has severe developmental anomalies.

  • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
    33·
    8 months ago

    Wow, you never hear the UK mentioned as a place with abortion restrictions, but they have life in prison as a hypothetically administerable sentence for it, if done the wrong way.

    • ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.world
      9·
      8 months ago

      Technically abortion is illegal. There has to be a medical reason for the abortion. In practice a Doctor would consider not wanting to be pregnant would make an abortion necessary. Practice and society expectations differ from the actual law.

      This would suggest no prosector would bring charges against anyone, as it wouldn’t be in the public interest. So the police shouldn’t wast resources on it.

      There has also been a rise in abortions lately. It appears to be down to misinformation online about contraception.

        • ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.world
          1·
          8 months ago

          Yes, but it costs political capital for very little gain. People won’t see it as a pro-abortion move. But anti-abortion people will see it as a pro-abortion move.

          The UK doesn’t have the same public debate about abortion as we see in the USA. However, there is a quiet contingent of anti-abortion politicians.

          The conservatives won’t move against them. The Tory strategy has been to embrace all positions to the right of them that get any steam. It’s seen them move from being the party bring the UK into the EU to leaving it. Being responsible for the the creation of the ECHR to calling for its end. If the Tories made this change in legislation they would anger the the right of their party. This would cause them to flip position back to where we are now. The total result would have them lose moderate votes that would no longer trust them with women’s health care.

  • Nonameuser678@aussie.zone
    141·
    8 months ago

    Wait so I thought this was a thing in the US because of all the Christofascists. Does the UK also have a christofascist thing going on? Or is this just kind of an everything goes culture war bullshit thing?

    • CashewNut 🏴󠁢󠁥󠁧󠁿@lemmy.world
      10·
      8 months ago

      Your Christo-fascists are pushing their agenda in the UK from here.

      This network has been linked to major US funders of climate change denial and right-wing political causes including the Koch brothers and Robert Mercer, and to populist far-right parties in Europe, such as the Sweden Democrats and the Brothers of Italy

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
    131·
    8 months ago

    I heard a good news article on unexplained miscarriages on NPR last week.

    There’s a correlation between having a healthy baby and the volume of the placenta. Small placentas result in loss.

    Which makes sense, the placenta is passing all the oxygen and nutrients to the baby, if it fails to size up, the baby is starved of nutrients and… well…

    The doctor who invented the process to measure placental volume is getting the usual pushback from established medicine though. :(

    Worth a listen if you have time:

    https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/placenta-pregnancy-loss/

    • Chetzemoka@startrek.website
      3·
      8 months ago

      Almost all miscarriages are unexplained. Because research into health issues that primarily affect women is still in the fucking dark ages.

      I had a friend who suffered multiple miscarriages (including one that wouldn’t complete itself and almost required surgical intervention because she was bleeding so badly - a procedure that her home state of Ohio is trying to ban now because it’s the exact same procedure that is used in electric elective abortions.

      After so many losses they finally figured out that her progesterone levels were extremely low and supplemented progesterone the next time she got pregnant. She now has a healthy baby boy as a result.

      Medicine doesn’t even have solutions for so many of these problems, and half the government wants to take away one of the few tools available to us to keep women alive and healthy.

    • DevCat@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      131·
      8 months ago

      I am a CIS male and run the Flo app just to mess with their stats and tracking. You wouldn’t believe how often my period is off!

      • SARGEx117@lemmy.world
        6·
        8 months ago

        Same! I had a pregnancy scare a few weeks ago, but I’m back on my period again with my nonexistent uterus. Phew.

        • averagedrunk@lemmy.ml
          2·
          8 months ago

          I bled 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and 21st of October. I plan on doing it backwards this month. My cup and non-existent uterus runneth over. I’m thinking of having a pregnancy scare next month sometime, just in time for the holidays.

    • helenslunch@feddit.nl
      9·
      8 months ago

      It’s called data poisoning. I run AdNauseum and TrackMeNot which both do something similar but I’m shocked at the lack of data poisoning software development.

      Hiding your data can be hard but filling your profile with junk is trivial by comparison.

      • sailingbythelee@lemmy.world
        1·
        8 months ago

        I suspect there is plenty of data poisoning software development. However, most of it is private development for use in the lucrative business of click farming.

        The World Federation of Advertisers estimates that ad fraud (which is data poisoning with extra steps) accounts for 10-30% of clicks, globally.

        • helenslunch@feddit.nl
          1·
          8 months ago

          I guess the question is why isn’t there more public development? Why doesn’t EFF add this to privacy badger?

      • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
        1·
        8 months ago

        Data poisoning is part of my moral system. If a company asks me a personal question, I give them a slightly incorrect answer

        I’ve been doing it since I started using the Internet, and it pays off. My information is all scrambled… It’s still out there since it’s all been leaked, but it’s enough to make it hard to process my info

    • bleistift2@feddit.deEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      In the civilized world it’s not even illegal to lie to the police (as a defendant).

  • HowMany@lemmy.ml
    8·
    8 months ago

    Amazing how many governments are interested in making sure babies happen - to the point of sounding alarms.

    What do they know that they’re not telling? Is the pollution so bad that we’ve wiped ourselves out biologically?

    • pinkdrunkenelephants@lemmy.cafeEnglish
      9·
      8 months ago

      They know that democracy has always just been an illusion to keep us in line and that we are actually just chattel slaves for the ruling class. The system they built requires a stable or growing population when in fact it’s declining, so they’re taking the easy way out to boost numbers.

      In the future, they’ll just grow us in vats so if we get out if line, they will just murder us all and grow a new batch of slaves. Progress! 😃

  • Metal Zealot@lemmy.ml
    6·
    8 months ago

    Soon, tampons will have wifi so they can send your data to the govt, and then they’ll know you’re pregnant before you even do.