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Content type: Advocacy
In August 2023, the UK Westminster Women and Equalities Committee launched a call for evidence into a short inquiry on women’s reproductive health.We submitted a response highlighting the increasing management of women’s reproductive healthcare through digital health initiatives. We raised concerns that these technologies can be privacy-invasive and result in highly sensitive personal information being shared in unexpected and potentially dangerous ways. We encouraged the Committee to ensure…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International contributed to the UNSR's report by submitting information on the work we have done as well as our Network of partners as we’ve monitored and responded to developments associated with the use of data and technology in the health care sector by governments and companies.
Content type: Advocacy
PI welcomes the opportunity to engage once again with the mandate by submitting comments, evidence, and recommendations to the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Ms. Tlaleng Mofokeng. We hope that our input will contribute to the forthcoming report, “Digital innovation, technologies and the right to health”.
Technology has contributed significantly to the planning and delivery of health information, services and care. We have seen the use of data and technology across the healthcare…
Content type: News & Analysis
The relationship between privacy and access to abortion care
In 1973, in the state of Texas, it was a criminal offence to “procure or attempt” an abortion except if the purpose was “saving the life of the mother.” This law was enacted in 1854 by the Texas state legislature, and was part of a wave of provisions criminalising access to abortion care that was gaining ground across the U.S in the mid-1800s. It is worth highlighting that these laws were being passed at a time when women in the U.S…
Content type: Long Read
This piece is a part of a collection of research that demonstrates how data-intensive systems that are built to deliver reproductive and maternal healthcare are not adequately prioritising equality and privacy.
Digital health apps of all kinds are being used by people to better understand their bodies, their fertility, and to access health information. But there are concerns that the information people both knowingly and unknowing provide to the app, which can be very personal health…
Content type: Long Read
For over 20 years with the start of the first use of ICTs in the 1990s, we have seen a digital revolution in the health sector. The Covid-19 pandemic significantly accelerated the digitalisation of the health sector, and it illustrates how fast this uptake can be and what opportunities can emerge; but also, importantly, the risks that it involves.
As we've said many times before, whilst technologies can be part of the solution to tackle some socio-economic and political challenges facing our…
Content type: Long Read
Image found here.
Founded in 1959, Bounty UK Limited markets itself as an information service for pregnant women and new mothers. Prior to the pandemic, it was best known for distributing “Bounty packs” of free samples of baby products to pregnant women at midwife appointments, to new mothers on maternity wards in the UK and through its digital presence via its website and app. Bounty representatives also sold new born photography packages to new mothers at the hospital bedside. Bounty entered…
Content type: Long Read
India’s Mother and Child Tracking System (MCTS) is a system that collects vast amounts of data about pregnant people, children, and families. It is an initiative by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in India, and was first trialled in 2009. It was then rolled out nation-wide in 2011. Its declared purpose, as stated in the press release accompanying it, was to facilitate “ensuring timely delivery of full spectrum of health care services to pregnant women and children up to 5 years of age…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International responded to a call for submissions of the Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls on the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls in situations of crisis.
This submission builds on PI’s research highlighting the ways in which data exploitative technologies can obstruct the realisation of sexual and reproductive rights, and research carried out by our partners on the specific manifestations of these obstacles in multiple countries of…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International and Hiperderecho made a joint submission to the UN Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) ahead of the Committee finalising the list of issues for the examination of Peru.
The submission builds on research commissioned by Privacy International and carried out by Hiperderecho on the state of reproductive rights in Peru, and how their exercise intersects with privacy and tech.
The submission is available in…
Content type: Case Study
The right to privacy is one of the precedents used to establish reproductive rights. Laws and policies which impede upon individuals’ rights to access sexual and reproductive health services may also interfere with individuals’ right to privacy and to make autonomous decisions as it pertains to their health and fertility, meaning the two are linked. Reproductive rights are necessary for bodily autonomy.
Reproductive rights have, more recently, been put at risk by one of the most concerning…
Content type: Long Read
This piece was written by Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon, who are policy officers at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in India. The piece was originally published on the website Economic Policy Weekly India here.
In order to bring out certain conceptual and procedural problems with health monitoring in the Indian context, this article posits health monitoring as surveillance and not merely as a “data problem.” Casting a critical feminist lens, the historicity of surveillance practices…
Content type: Long Read
We are excited to spotlight our Reproductive Rights and Privacy Project!
The Project is focused on researching and exposing organisations that collect and exploit the information of those seeking to exercise their reproductive rights. Working together with PI partners, other international grassroots organisations and NGOs, PI is researching and advocating against this data exploitation.
So, what are reproductive rights?
Sexual and reproductive rights, which are contained within Economic,…