Thanks to Her, it’s easy to envision a future where humans can get freaky with their technological devices, so it’s not such a big leap to assume technology will play a role in our reproductive functions as well. Introducing Kindara, an iPhone app and fertility tracker that’s helped 10,000 women achieve pregnancy (and an undetermined number of women avoid it).
Created in 2012 by husband-and-wife team William Sacks and Katherine Bicknell, Kindara (bonus points for an app that sounds like it was named after a character from The Lion King) helps you get pregnant, or avoid getting pregnant, by tracking your ovulation cycle, basal body temperature, and the consistency and amount of your cervical mucus (sexy!).
To date, Sacks says the app has helped 10,000 women conceive, with users reporting nearly 500 pregnancies a week. Because Kindara also includes an “avoid getting pregnant” feature (you can switch the settings from “get pregnant” to “avoid getting pregnant”), the app has also helped countless women prevent pregnancy, so they can stay sexually active while withdrawing from their regular hormonal birth control method.
Kindara is based on the Fertility Awareness Method, a form of contraception in which a woman tracks her own menstrual cycle so she can identify when she is at her most fertile. That way, if she wants to get pregnant, she can have sex at the peak of her fertility cycle (it’s also not the only app on the market that relies on FA: Glow, a similar app that launched last summer, also tracks women’s cycles to help them avoid or achieve conception).
As a form of regular birth control, the FA method is of questionable effectiveness: it does not prevent against STI transmission, and some researchers estimate that it has a 25 percent failure rate at preventing pregnancy, due to many women misusing the method or inaccurately tracking their cycles. In fact, due to the relatively high risk of pregnancy, some medical professionals only recommend FA as a form of birth control for couples whose religious beliefs prohibit standard contraceptives.
Kindara’s founders acknowledge that their app, and the FA method in general, are not for everyone. “We want every woman to use the birth control that is right for her,” Sacks said. He co-founded the app with Bicknell after seeing her suffer from the side effects of hormonal birth control. “[But] what we do want is for every woman to know that Fertility Awareness is an effective option whether they are trying to get pregnant, or want to effectively avoid pregnancy.”
H/T Business Insider | Photo by bethanykphotography/Flickr (CC BY – NC – SA 2.0)
