Read the week's best commentary from bloggers at the Center for American Progress' "ThinkProgress" and Slate's "XX Factor."
ANTIABORTION-RIGHTS MOVEMENT:
"The anti-choice movement is hijacking Black Lives Matter to push its own agenda," Laurel Raymond, Center for American Progress' "ThinkProgress": The surge of the antiabortion-rights hashtag '#UnbornLivesMatter' on Twitter following the recent shooting of two black men by police officers and of five officers providing security for a Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest is "not the first time the anti-abortion movement has co-opted BLM for its own end," Raymond writes. According to Raymond, "Language like this enrages BLM and reproductive rights advocates, because it co-opts black women as pawns using exactly the language that was meant to lift them up." She writes, "If the focus was truly on women's health or helping the black community, advocates say, then 'all lives matter' and 'unborn lives matter' proponents ought to be advocating for increasing access to women's health care, ending poverty, fighting infant mortality and lack of education access, and addressing gun violence. Instead, the focus remains on policing women's bodies." Raymond explains that "by hijacking movements focused on combating racism for their own ends, anti-abortion groups actually end up perpetuating racist stereotypes about black women" and "derai[l] the conversation about racially-biased policing and black death by police bullets." Raymond concludes, "Anti-abortion rhetoric focused on black women argues for them to have that control over their bodies taken away from them -- even as black women take to the streets to protest for control of their bodies from the police" (Raymond, "ThinkProgress," Center for American Progress," 7/12).
What others are saying about the antiabortion-rights movement:
~ "50 organizations call for an end to the GOP witch hunt of Planned Parenthood," Alex Zielinski, Center for American Progress' "ThinkProgress."
CONTRACEPTION:
"The vast majority of fertility apps are ineffective forms of birth control," Elissa Strauss, Slate's "XX Factor": Strauss discusses a recent study in which researchers reviewed 95 mobile applications for fertility and "found that only a small fraction of them delivered accurate results," meaning that "the majority of fertility apps are not reliable forms of birth control." Strauss explains that while "new technology ... and an increased awareness of the biological indicators of ovulation, means women today have the capacity to be more precise in their predictions than women in the past," the latest "study is important news for the growing number of women who are relying on non-hormonal techniques to avoid pregnancy." Nonetheless, Strauss writes that according to Marguerite Duane -- the study's lead author, a family physician and adjunct associate professor at Georgetown University -- "the findings are a warning about blind trust in technology, and not non-hormonal birth control." Citing Duane, Strauss adds that the "study only tested the effectiveness of these apps in helping women avoid pregnancy, and that determining these apps' effectiveness in helping women get pregnant would require more time and resources" (Strauss, "XX Factor," Slate, 7/13).
