Posts Tagged ‘ breast cancer awareness ’

MO Progressive Caucus Joins 50 in Congress: Koman, Please Reconsider

Friday, February 3rd, 2012

By Jo Mannies – St. Louis Beacon

Thirty-four members of the Missouri General Assembly’s bipartisan Progressive Caucus have formally asked the national Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation “to reconsider their decision to cut cancer-screening funding to Planned Parenthood.”

The group has signed letters sent to the foundation and to its chief executive, Nancy Brinker.

(Click here to read the Beacon’s article on the controversy.)

“The foundation’s decision to cut funding for breast cancer prevention, screening, and education at Planned Parenthood health centers will affect hundreds of thousands of women,” said State Rep.Stacey Newman, D-Richmond Heights and chair of the caucus.

The caucus calls the Komen decision “simply wrong.”

The caucus is siding with more than 50 members of Congress who are defending Planned Parenthood, citing its health care programs for hundreds of thousands of women nationally “who would otherwise have no treatment.”

The Komen foundation had been issuing grants of at least $700,000 annually to Planned Parenthood for health services and education. The foundation is dropping the agency because of a congressional investigation into its activities.

No Planned Parenthood operations in Missouri receive Komen grants.

Said Newman:  “So many women, particularly low income and students, rely on these services. This is about health and preventing cancer, not a political agenda. “We all know many women who have relied on Planned Parenthood for screenings or other well-woman exams which have unexpectedly detected early stages of cancer. Many lives have been saved because of access to Planned Parenthood preventive services.”

Newman noted that the Progressive Caucus recently introduced a joint resolution in the Missouri House in favor of “family planning and wellness services which Missouri women depend on for their reproductive health.”

The letter to Koman is signed by:  State Representatives Atkins, Carlson, Carter, Colona, Ellinger, Ellington, Gray Walton, Hughes, Jones (Tishaura), Kelly , Kirkton, Lampe, May, McCann Beatty, McCreery, McDonald, McGeoghean, McNeil, Montecillo, Morgan, Mott Oxford, Newman, Nichols, Pace, Pierson, Rizzo, Schupp, Sifton, Smith (Clem), Spreng, Still, Talboy, Taylor and Webb.

 

Susan G. Komen’s Act of Cowardice

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

By   – Slate.com  |  Posted Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012, at 6:24 PM ET

Planned Parenthood clinical assistant Nicki Bailey discusses the new abortion laws with a patient in Austin. Photo by Eric Schlegel, Texas Tribune

In a shocking move Tuesday afternoon, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the country’s most famous breast cancer charity, pulled its grants for breast-cancer screenings from Planned Parenthood. Komen claims that their reason is that Planned Parenthood is under investigation from Congress, but as it’s well-understood on both the left and the right that the investigation, headed by Rep. Cliff Stearns, is a nuisance investigation that will almost surely turn up nothing, this excuse sounds lame indeed. The likelier explanation is the one offered by Planned Parenthood, that Komen caved under relentless pressure from anti-choice activists who oppose Planned Parenthood for offering abortions as well as low-cost contraception and STD prevention and treatment. In addition, Komen has a history of not playing nice with other women’s health organizations. Planned Parenthood has created an emergency fund to replace the Komen grants, to keep the breast-cancer screening service from being interrupted.

The existence of breast-cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood has always been a thorn in the anti-choice side. Most of Planned Parenthood’s services are related to the choice to be sexually active—contraception, STD screening and treatment, cervical cancer screening—making it easy to write off those services as unnecessary if you follow the strict abstinence-only prescription the Christian right has for women. Breast cancer, however, can strike the lifelong virgin, the married woman who only has sex for procreation, and the dirty fornicator (i.e. the vast majority of American women) alike. Because of this, anti-choicers have tried to create a rift between women’s health advocates who focus on breast cancer and those who focus on reproductive health concerns below the waist. Today, they had a victory with Komen’s act of cowardice.

No matter how much anti-choicers wish otherwise, it’s not feasible to create an approach to women’s health that separates good girl concerns from bad girl concerns. For instance, many women land in gynocologist’s offices seeking contraceptive services and cervical-cancer screenings, and doctors use that opportunity to teach the art of breast self-exam. As noted inmy previous post on the Santorums’ pregnancy troubles, even the world of the hated abortion provider and the much-vaunted obstetrician can’t be so easily separated, as the latter is often called upon to have knowledge of pregnancy termination in case of a medical emergency.

In the end, the grant money is less important than the symbolism of Komen buying into the conservative myth of good-girl health care vs. bad-girl health care. In reality, women’s health care can only work if it’s comprehensive health care. Komen has already been under serious scrutiny by those who argue that the organization cares more about shoring up their image than making real progress in the fight for women’s health, and with this move today, they proved their critics right.

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