Mastodawn

Oneironaut Jun 12

1 Aby vs 100 Gorillas

Police in UK can now take women's phones and check their period tracking app

Several women's health and safety organisations have spoken out against the 'shocking' new guidance, vowing to 'aggressively challenge' it

"New guidance in the UK has handed British police the power to trawl through women's phones if they suspect said individual has undergone an illegal abortion.

As per an announcement made by the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) last month, officers investigating the causes of stillbirths, miscarriages and unexpected pregnancy losses will now be permitted access to check menstrual cycle tracking apps.

The alleged aim of the incoming procedure is to 'establish a woman’s knowledge and intention in relation to the pregnancy.'"

#UKPol #ReproductiveRights #ReproductiveJustice

https://www.tyla.com/news/uk-police-force-checking-womens-phones-period-apps-illegal-abortion-468700-20250606?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwK3BkRleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHo9dTikN0i4iv1z06L-2mGDMbTt-B-aQfQdTw9S4YfpfkHlnUeCPJOiHkX1C_aem_0lFBKwqqr27GIRjaumgqfQ

UK Police can now take women's phones and check their period tracking app

Several women's health and safety organisations have spoken out against the 'shocking' new guidance, vowing to 'aggressively challenge' it

tyla

Trish Roberts Jun 12

@aby UK? OMG

Michæl La💤Jun 12

@treleanor @aby
Does the UK even *have* an "illegal abortion" problem? One would expect that to only be an issue in less civilised countries without socialised medicine.

(From the article, it sounds like the incident that prompted it was a corner case of COVID lockdown crossed with innocent miscalculation.)

1 Aby vs 100 Gorillas Jun 12

@mlazz @treleanor - everywhere has an "illegal abortion problem", because everywhere has some sort of barrier to people obtaining abortion - whether it's something as simple as not having free transport services so someone can access the abortion service, as having age restrictions on services, through to things like gestational limits, service costs, and on the other end abortion being illegal.

Every single country in the world will have someone facing the risk of having to access unsafe abortion.

Also, the fact that police are able to do this in the UK PROVES that the UK has an "illegal abortion problem".

1 Aby vs 100 Gorillas Jun 12

@mlazz @treleanor - and as an aside, can we strike the idea of "civilised countries" from existence? It's pretty gross.

Michæl La💤Jun 12

@aby @treleanor
I was just taking a dig at the USA, but I take your point.

@mlazz @treleanor @aby
There have been other widely reported cases that have lead to convictions. The UK has a cut off for legal surgical abortions at 24 weeks (unless under exceptional circumstances). The “pills by post” scheme for medical abortions has lead to an increase in them being abused outside the 10 weeks when it's deemed safe to do so, and outside the 24 week limit for surgical abortions.
If the 24 week limit should change is another question.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/abortion-laws-uk-time-limits-b2356510.html

Abortion time limits — what are the UK laws?

‘If you’re under 16, your parents do not usually need to be told,’ NHS says

The Independent

1 Aby vs 100 Gorillas Jun 12

@geoffl - those pills aren't "abused", they're taken by people who are having trouble otherwise accessing a medical procedure they should be entitled.

@mlazz @treleanor

Alex von Kitchen Jun 12

@aby "officers investigating still births"

Wtf?

1 Aby vs 100 Gorillas Jun 12

@Dangerous_beans - criminalising people for the deviance of not carrying a foetus to completion, because that's the sole purpose of anyone born with a vagina and not doing it means you're not womaning hard enough.

FediThing 🏳️‍🌈Jun 12

Ping @privacyint

@aby omg, I didn't realise this stuff had all actually gone through. Bet the TERFs are happy with how human rights are going 🤦

FediThing 🏳️‍🌈Jun 12

The "National Police Chiefs' Council" featured in this article is not a government body, it's the reworking of a very notorious privately-owned company called ACPO:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Chief_Police_Officers

ACPO wasn't accountable to anyone and behaved very oddly, it was like a secret society for police chiefs, it even ran its own DNA database.

There was a BBC documentary in the 1980s about ACPO about how dubious and opaque it was, meddling in things that should have been under democratic control: https://archive.org/details/SecretSocietyPart4AssociationOfChiefPoliceOfficers-Acpo

It wouldn't be surprising if they have got up to their old habits of ignoring public oversight to push hidden agendas.

Association of Chief Police Officers - Wikipedia

MidgePhoto Jun 12

@FediThing @aby
Some things are better done once for many allied organisations than by each of them.
Others are not.
Matching what is to what should be is unlikely to have a single correct answer with no discussion.

Among things ACPO usefully did, and the successor has continued, is a consensus statement about taking photographs. ...

MidgePhoto Jun 12

...
I carry a printout of it, through I think 6 Police areas this month.

Having had to carry 6 would be inferior, and having it written 25 times, more so.

MidgePhoto Jun 12

@FediThing @aby
"Company" "private company".

If it wasn't a private company, it would be a public company, with shares, trade able, and ownership possible for criminals to accumulate. You prefer?

If it wasn't a (limited) company then it could be a club - bad one way - or a partnership - bad another few ways. Almost anything of size becomes in part a ltd company.

If you collect 8 mates and go to play volcano quoits then you are a company, not that it is simple to walk into there.

FediThing 🏳️‍🌈Jun 12

@midgephoto @aby

The main point was that it wasn't controlled by government or by its members. It wasn't any kind of trade union or charity or membership organisation.

One of the points in the documentary is how little control even ACPO's members had, they couldn't choose ACPO's leadership. Leaders would just emerge by an opaque process and then interfere in how laws were interpreted and enforced. It wasn't clear whose interests it was serving.

MidgePhoto Jun 12

@FediThing @aby We don't have a national police force controlled by central government, so "controlled by government" would be cumbersome. (And you'd end up with a committee appointed by 50 counties, in a process)

However, isn't the qualification for membership, then and now, to be a chief police officer?

If control is the king-emperor instructing his servants what to believe, then no.
OTOH if control is firing your delegate and replacing them, then yes.
And councils talk to each other.

1 Aby vs 100 Gorillas Jun 12

@FediThing - I'm not sure what the point of mentioning that is? "That harmful and oppressive thing is being done by a powerful org that's not the govt" doesn't make it any better...?

FediThing 🏳️‍🌈Jun 13

@aby I'm not saying this makes it better, I'm just trying to shed light on who is doing this horrible thing so they can be pressured. One of the things the ACPO documentary highlighted was how much they enjoyed flying under the public radar because it helped them avoid accountability.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean it to sound like I was criticising the original post 😞

@aby "officers investigating the causes of miscarriage" is such a nightmare sentence. I fear for my daughters and all other people who can get pregnant.

AlexanderVI Jun 12

@aby what in the Judge Dredd?

Anarchic Teapot ⚧️Jun 12

@aby Welcome to your Labour-led police state.

RolloTreadway Jun 12

@anarchic_teapot It's nothing to do with the Labour government, and it's Labour MPs who are bringing an amendment next week that would end this disgrace.

Anarchic Teapot ⚧️Jun 12

@RolloTreadway Good, but nonetheless I doubt the "guidance" would have been issued if the Chief Pigs didn't think they could get away with it.

RolloTreadway Jun 12

@anarchic_teapot Yeah, that's called 'making shit up'. You know nothing about this, but still imagine all the world has to fit into what you believe.

RolloTreadway Jun 12

@aby Hi from someone who actually knows about this, rather than a random celebrity news site.

Firstly, the NPCC is a private organisation of senior police officers, it is not a branch of Government and nothing it says has legislative power. It's a bunch of cops saying that misogynists in the police aren't misogynist enough and need to up the misogyny.

This is depressing and horrible and disgraceful, without question. People who are or have recently been pregnant are being harassed and prosecuted with increasing frequency, and it's hard to see this as anything other than a misogynist attack on women's rights by male cops who have far too much power. The victims have lived through a nightmare.

But the link and the other replies I've read suggest that this is a centralised, Government-led attack on abortion rights, like you'd see in the US, and that could scarcely be further from the truth.

In a few days' time, Parliament will vote on whether to abolish all criminal offences that a pregnant person can commit in relation to their pregnancy. It would put an end to this persecution at a stroke. I don't want to prejudge anything but based on how many MPs already publicly support it, mostly on the Government benches, I'm hopeful that it will pass. And many of us have been working hard to give it the best possible chance of passing.

That's the reality. Decent people versus the police, as is so often the case. Poorly researched stories from gossip sites that prioritise stories like 'what King Charles said to his dad' are not at all helpful.

@RolloTreadway @aby thanks. Appreciate the context

James 🦉 #FBPE 🇪🇺Jun 12

@RolloTreadway @aby Thanks for this, and thank God!

@RolloTreadway @aby Can you identify the bill to make it easier to ask or MPs to support it - finding out what's what's coming up to cure is stupidly hard if you don't follow every in and out.

RolloTreadway Jun 12

@leiawelsh @aby Certainly! It's New Clause 1 for the Crime and Policing Bill. Looks like it'll be debated on Tuesday, but no later than Wednesday.

The list of amendments is here https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/59-01/0235/amend/crime_policing_rm_rep_0612.pdf, but it's a big list, you have to scroll down to page 99 to reach the abortion amendments.

There is another prospective amendment, New Clause 20 from Stella Creasy, but that is opposed by most (maybe all) of the abortion providers in the UK, not because there's anything wrong with it in principle, but because it's such a huge change to the law it really needs to be done via a Bill of its own. Which hopefully will happen eventually.

But right now, it seems best to throw weight behind New Clause 1, which is much simpler, it only does one thing: to remove all possible criminal liability from pregnant people in relation to their own pregnancy.

@aby the UK has long been an abominable shit show, and it's not getting better, it seems.

1 Aby vs 100 Gorillas Jun 12

@hllizi - the world is moving towards fascism on a global scale.

@aby long before that (or before it became obivous) the UK came up with tremendous ideas like making it punishable not to surrender your passwords to the police. They're very avant-garde.

troy_friz_zell Jun 12

I'm sorry, did you say UK or Alabama?

Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE Jun 12

@aby "knowledge and intention"?

Isn't that what Orwell called "thought police"?

@aby U.K., WTF?

Bandersnatch Jun 12

Be better.

1 Aby vs 100 Gorillas Jun 12

@Bandersnatch - what do you mean?

Bandersnatch Jun 12

I don't know, I was responding to someone else, I don't know how you ended up here.

HighlandLawyer Jun 12

@aby
I sincerely hope they mean "England & Wales" rather than "UK", because Police Scotland's budget would not stand the compensation claims against them for ECHR breaches while investigating a non-crime (hint, Offences Against the Person Act 1861 does not apply to Scotland)

Which is not to say that it is at all acceptable in E&W either, just that women's remedies against the police would be fewer & less certain, hence the need to politically oppose such a policy.

Rhedyn Thain 🏳️‍⚧️🤡🛹🏳️‍🌈Jun 12

@HighlandLawyer @aby yeah another nationalist who doesn’t care if women are harmed as long as they don’t affect your country.
I loathe nationalists, they only care about their own and happily throw others to the wolves because they were born underneath an equally worthless but different flag.

HighlandLawyer Jun 12

@Rhedmtf @aby
I presume you didn't bother reading the last paragraph of my post then, pointing out that this is an issue that needs to be fought politically in England & Wales where the simple(r) legal remedy available in Scotland doesn't exist.

Dr Andrew A. Adams #FBPE 🔶Jun 12

@aby @pluralistic
First the anti-trans SC decision, now this b/s. The UK is following the US about sexual/gender rights. These are the thin end of the wedge.
😡

1 Aby vs 100 Gorillas Jun 12

@a_cubed - there's a global move towards fascism

@aby it might be too late but we really need to work toward de-normalizing smart phones. i dont even mean we can't have an arm soc with a radio modem that does telephony while being capable of computing tasks, but the current standard of a locked-down soc with a walled garden of software and all built ground-up around surveilling the user, and which has no off-switch, without even a removable battery, should not be so ubiquitous. its too inherently dystopian

Comrade elronxenu Jun 12

@aby Police will investigate miscarriages?!

Je suis contente Jun 12

@aby
This might be detrimental to the period tracking apps. No female should download and use these apps.

LeonianUniverse😁Jun 12

@sophiarose @aby wow, the fuck is wrong with the UK police, that is absolutely wild.

1 Aby vs 100 Gorillas Jun 12

@LeonianUniverse - police everywhere are tools of oppression.

HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴Jun 12

#MyBodyMyChoice
#Legal #Privatspäre
#Abtreibung

(1/n)

👉#*Überwachungsstaat #Uk*:

Nach #PredictivePolicing nun auch #HandyDurchsuchung und weiter Abbau von #Frauenrechte|n im #VereinigtenKönigreich nach #US-Vorbild👈

"Die #Polizei in #Großbritannien kann jetzt die Handys von Frauen beschlagnahmen und ihre #PeriodenverfolgungsApp überprüfen

Mehrere Frauengesundheits- und -sicherheitsorganisationen haben sich gegen die "schockierende" neue Richtlinie ausgesprochen...

https://www.tyla.com/news/uk-police-force-checking-womens-phones-period-apps-illegal-abortion-468700-20250606?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwK3BkRleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHo9dTikN0i4iv1z06L-2mGDMbTt-B-aQfQdTw9S4YfpfkHlnUeCPJOiHkX1C_aem_0lFBKwqqr27GIRjaumgqfQ

UK Police can now take women's phones and check their period tracking app

Several women's health and safety organisations have spoken out against the 'shocking' new guidance, vowing to 'aggressively challenge' it

tyla

HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴Jun 12

#MyBodyMyChoice
#Legal #Privatspäre
#Abtreibung

(2/n)

👉#*Überwachungsstaat #Uk*:👈

...und versprochen, sie "aggressiv anzufechten".

"Neue Richtlinien im #VereinigtenKönigreich haben der #britischen 👉#Polizei die Befugnis gegeben, die Telefone von Frauen zu durchsuchen, wenn sie den Verdacht haben, dass diese eine #IllegaleAbtreibung vorgenommen haben.👈

Wie der Nationale Rat der...

HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴Jun 12

#MyBodyMyChoice
#Legal #Privatspäre
#Abtreibung

(3/3)

👉#*Überwachungsstaat #Uk*:👈

...Polizeichefs (#NPCC) im vergangenen Monat bekannt gab, dürfen Beamte, die nach den Ursachen von #Totgeburten, Fehlgeburten und unerwarteten #Schwangerschaftsverlusten suchen, nun Apps zur Überwachung des #Menstruationszyklus überprüfen.

Das angebliche Ziel des neuen Verfahrens ist es, "das Wissen und die Absicht der Frau in Bezug auf die #Schwangerschaft festzustellen".

//

MikeSafari Jun 12

@aby Wait, why are police investigating pregnancy losses anyway? The fuck?

1 Aby vs 100 Gorillas Jun 12

@MikeSafari - because fascism...