By Thursday we all learned a lot about Komen, and Planned Parenthood and breast cancer. We might have started to learn what it will take to mobilize the outcry it will take to really stop the attacks on women's health.
We heard about Komen flacking for unsafe drugs like Avastin, and partnering with the evangelicals to distribute those pink Bibles. And that many women rely on Planned Parenthood for breast cancer exams. A slam-dunk week for Planned Parenthood.
We need to make it a slam-dunk month. What Komen, and the evangelicals, and Rep. Cliff Stearns, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, are really mad at Planned Parenthood about, is this*:
Part of what they do is help people plan. Parenthood. You know. They support birth control. In some cases, they provide it. Like your corner drugstore, but better.
And this week the Bishops are howling about it. Never mind that virtually all Catholics use birth control, that the Church itself only began to oppose it in 1968, that the Pope recently conceded that condoms are useful, and approved, for stopping the transmission of AIDS. Never mind that virtually all Catholic-affiliated hospitals, schools and charities cover birth control in their health plans. The health plans that come out of the wages employees earn themselves.
That they don't need birth control because they are, to a person, men.
Close to every cent the Church has not spent settling lawsuits against priests who sexually molested children has gone into this week's media campaign to rile up opposition to covering birth control.
So far they're doing a pretty effective job of it. The Administration is standing firm, but Congress is still on the warpath.
Women, are you listening?
Help stop a bill that would take away birth-control coverage from millions of women.
Tell Susan G. Komen for the Cure, "Don't bow to anti-choice pressure. Reestablish breast health funding for Planned Parenthood affiliates."
Tell Susan G. Komen: Don't throw Planned Parenthood under the bus! Don't cave to anti-woman extremists and cut off funding for breast cancer screenings at the largest provider of health care.
*According to the Women's Media Center: Since 2005, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) and STOPP (most recently known as the Society To Outlaw Planned Parenthood), have pushed a very public campaign aimed at ending Komen Foundation funding of Planned Parenthood services for breast cancer screening. Dr. John Willke, a former President of the National Right to Life Committee has promoted a STOPP research report about the Komen Foundation support of Planned Parenthood. In October, 2011, Carol Tobias, the President of the National Right to Life Committee, wrote a column for Legatus Magazine that criticized the Komen Foundation with sentences like, "Komen's support of the nation's largest abortion provider is ironic in that, while Komen works to find a cure for breast cancer, Planned Parenthood is providing a "service" that contributes to the increase of breast cancer." [NOTE: According to the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health, over 100 of the world's leading experts have concluded that having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman's subsequent risk of developing breast cancer [Summary Report: Early Reproductive Events and Breast Cancer Workshop]
The National Right to Life Committee was originally created by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the President of the National Right to Life Committee has a platform and megaphone that extends far beyond the NRLC federation of 50 state right-to-life organizations and 3,000 local chapters nationwide. In light of the public campaign against the Komen Foundation by the anti-choice movement, it is difficult to understand how the decision by the Komen Foundation is not related to abortion politics.
Follow Ellen R. Shaffer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ershaffer
What Komen, and the evangelicals, and Rep. Cliff Stearns, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, are really mad at Planned Parenthood about, is this: Part of what they {‘PP’}, do is help people plan. They support birth control. In some cases, they provide it.â€
Perhaps pro-choicers should thank evangelicals & (closeted) catholic bishops for waking us all up from our impending complacency!
On the other hand…
politicians HAD to notice the hundreds of thousands to millions who took a moment out out of their busy schedules to make known their disgust with SG Koman;
...and of course, to spot-donate to PP!
I’m STILL unemployed. I will be spot-donating to PP anyway in the next few days...
If I were STILL a weekly congregant at the local monotheist-meeting-house, Wee-Timmy-Dolan would be my (homophobic, reality-challenged…), 'fearless leader-embarrassment', locally speaking…
I suppose!
Imagine the sacred, apostolic dollars that found their way to PP these last few days-a week, rather than a thithe collection plate, & hence, to an RCC defense lawyer, busy protecting the church’s horny practioners from their latest accusations/antics!
In addition to pulling funds from Planned Parenthood, The Susan G. Komen Foundation also decided to stop funding embryonic stem cell research centers, making it fully transparent the organization has evolved from non-political non-profit to a partisan advocacy organization.
That means the loss of $3.75 million to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, $4.5 million to the University of Kansas Medical Center, $1 million to the U.S. National Cancer Institute, $1 million to the Society for Women’s Health Research, and $600,000 to Yale University. That’s a loss of nearly $12 million dollars in research money to eradicate breast cancer this year alone.
This is a new position for the organization which had previously supported all sorts of scientific research targeted at finding a cure for breast cancer and saving women’s lives. Its new position is that the organization will categorically no longer support any embryonic stem cell research.
Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/susan-g-komen-foundation-also-stops-funding-embryonic-stem-cell-research.html#ixzz1lUDHZmrq
Today we learn that Ari Fleisher was doing the interviewing for the position that ultimately went to Karen Handel. Tonight we learn from WaPo:
"Brinker told affiliates Saturday that they would also be getting help on crisis communications from Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary in the George W. Bush administration."
I was shocked, and they lost my support from that moment forward. Something is very wrong with that organization.
From Daily Finance- October 4, 2011
The perfume was designed and produced by TPR holdings, a consumer products company that manufactures a wide array of colognes and cosmetics. In return for Komen's endorsement, TPR donates $1 million a year to the charity. The perfume does not list its ingredients on the label, so the advocacy group Breast Cancer Action sent a sample to the Petaluma, Calif.-based chemical laboratory Analytical Sciences. What they found was a surprise.
Among other questionable ingredients, Promise Me contains galaxolide, a synthetic musk. A hormone disruptor, it accumulates in the body and has shown up in the fat, blood, and breast milk of women who wore perfumes that contained it. More disturbing, some studies have shown that it may be a contributing factor in the development of breast cancer.
Before going public with their findings, BCA executive director Karuna Jaggar sent a letter to Komen, asking them to pull the perfume from store shelves. The foundation's response was oddly contradictory. On the one hand, it was dismissive, claiming that "our Medical and Scientific Affairs team has thoroughly reviewed and evaluated current research about the perfume ingredients...and concluded that these ingredients do not elevate breast cancer risk in humans." Despite this position, however, Komen also agreed to "reformulate the perfume to remove any doubt about the ingredients.
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Meanwhile, the original formula is available at retailers.
They saw it coming, but didn't realize it would be here so soon.
They know how they've treated minorities all their lives.
Not looking forward to being on the receiving end.
They are concerned about Karma.
The stood in the way of HCR. They tried to stop passage of the entire bill because of women's health concerns.
These men are supposed to represent Christ on earth, and yet they feel as if it is their job to judge.
"Judge not, lest ye be judged" does not apply to them.
The nuns and sisters had the compassion in their hearts, and the UNDERSTANDING of poverty and health issues, to stand up against these very same Bishops in order to get HCR through congress.
Once again, if something must be done, give it to a woman/women.
These men want power and glory and the opportunity to deny access to others.
They have overstepped their bounds.
If they want a voice in politics, they should denounce their TAX-EXEMPT status. Crickets.
If a man wants you to have his seed, you'd better take it.
If a man wants you to have his seed, you'd better take it..." {demisfine}
The catholic church pays lip service to interfering with other’s effort to prevent pregnancy via pills condoms, barriers etc., because they prefer birth control the way they’ve always mis-managed it!
By enjoying sex with children of either the ‘wrong’ plumbing, (Fr. Shanly, incarcerated sex tourist; Fr. Gauguin, deceased sex tourist;), and/or, ‘immature’ plumbing, (Bishop Flynn’s former employee, Fr. Ratigan; the bishop’s evidence withholding & the priest’s upskirt-pics, respectively, {in this one-of-thousands-of-examples}), to prevent the possibility of inheritance-demanding-offspring!
The SGK foundation has done a lot of good for women, but, because it took, implicitly, a political position with which some disagree, it became a trendy, love-to-hate organization. How DARE it take a position counter to those who believe in abortion on demand (by the way, as much as I might "dislike" abortion, I don't want to impinge on a woman's access to a safe abortion)?
Assume that SGK WAS backing out of its benefactor relationship with PP because it's leadership disagrees with PP's status as a provider of abortion services? So what? It is THEIR money to do with what they want. It can't hold a view on abotion that is counter to what other, loud voices believe? Crazy. Eugene McCarthy would be proud of the demonization an organization hat has done a LOT of good.
You can't have it both ways. You can't say "we're doing this for the underpriveleged" and then in the same breath say "except *those* underpriveleged because we disapprove of the other medical options available in the facility."
I agree...
When I bring up www.bishopaccountability.org, ("Current Events" middle of the webpage), I feel like I'm reading an episode of the Sopranos, where 'child sex', 'national & international fugitive from justice' & 'money laundering' crimes, charges, convictions, fines, recoverable law suits, and criminal conspiracies are both documented, disscused & concerned!
That such 'gucci-sandled' & 'little black dress-wherein' trash would dare attempt to tell me how to conduct my sexual life with other ADULTS, presumably from their vast experience-base, let alone attempt to closet-legislate from behind the sceans, while shirking their economic responsibilities, (to pay taxes if one has a voice in the public discussion!), is quite beyond any gold/bronze/silver medals to be awarded during the morality olympics, 'rubber-spinal-column' decathlon!
So I propose a truce. The right can shut up about it for a few generations, and, at the end of such time, may re-apply for admission into the Club of Reality. And in return the left will thoughtfully consider the issues.
And yes, before you even ask, we do have a responsibility to help the poor.
Some people think it is important to take a firm hand in public health matters. There is a strong community interest in it. Some people would rather not be part of a community that takes a strong interest in public health, and that's OK, maybe they would be happier living in Somalia.