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Comment by maweki | Hacker News Reader

I urge everybody who thinks these tests are always easy to read to look at this page where women are indeed seeking help on interpreting their tests: https://www.countdowntopregnancy.com/pregnancy-test-gallery/...

The comments are very interesting and you should take a peek. Helpful commenters are using image editing tools to check out whether the second line is actually there or just imagined.

A second stripe means a life-altering situation and with regards to access to terminations, time is very much of the essence.

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Agreed. The sort of reductionist takes in here that blame education or illiteracy indicate a lack of experience.

Unfortunately in these borderline cases the only way to know for sure is to wait a few days and try again or set up a doctor's appt to get a better test.

Having these additional few days or not having them is incredibly important, depending on your jurisdiction.

In Germany, for example, for abortion (without medical indication) to be penalty-free you have to have a so called "pregnancy conflict counselling session" and the doctor's appointment all within a certain timespan. Now during covid, many of those doctors and the counselling services did not operate or only in a diminished capacity.

Those few days are nothing to sneer at.

Of course, another solution would be better/non-penalized access to these services and better preventative health care. But we're getting nowhere by just pointing at root causes without the radical action to change them.

I get the desire for the clear binary answer from seeing lots of similar problems with COVID tests. But if I bought this test I'd feel a bit scammed, I'd expect some magical fully digital process, the borderline results still exist with this system but are hidden, it kind of ruins it if you know that.

Could you elaborate a bit? I must be doing something wrong because most (9 out of 10) of these look negative (single stripe) to my eye on my monitor. Am I wrong about that? Or are you trying to point out that obviously negative tests still cause confusion and conflict in many of the users?

I guess the unsure ones are not the best example, though there are a few with incredibly faint lines. Maybe look at the positive ones. There are quite a few where I would strugge: https://www.countdowntopregnancy.com/pregnancy-test-gallery/...

The fact that the site provides on-line tools to change contrast, etc., is telling in itself.

But here are direct comparisons between an analog an digital ones:

* https://www.countdowntopregnancy.com/pregnancy-test-gallery/...

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