In the wake of the attacks on Planned Parenthood by Congressman Cliff Stearns and the Susan G. Komen Foundation, social media and tech guru Deanna Zandt created a tumblr this week at which women are telling their stories about how Planned Parenthood saved their lives through early cancer detection and other means.
Greg Sargeant of the Washington Post reports that the Komen controversy is "about to get significantly more intense [as] nearly two dozen Senators are set to enter the fray." Twenty-two Democratic Senators have signed on to a strongly-worded letter urging Komen to reverse its decision.
Writing in The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg reports that sources with direct knowledge of the Komen decision-making process said recent policies were adopted specifically to cut funding to Planned Parenthood.
We must stand with Planned Parenthood. But let’s not do so in a way that denies the extreme importance of all the services they provide. As advocates for reproductive justice, the last thing we can afford to do is allow ourselves to become complicit in the stigmatization of abortion.
Now in its "spin-cycle," Komen for the Cure is trying to justify its actions defunding critical breast cancer screening for the poor with a serious case of "pink-washing." Their rationale? They care about women. So they lie to them and deny them services.
The results of a five-year study of the Millennial Generation—people born between 1982 and 1993—are in. We now know that conservative evangelical churches are losing formerly–affiliated “young creatives:” Actors, artists, biologists, designers, mathematicians, medical students, musicians, and writers. The report implies that once Millennials abandon evangelism, the barriers to progressive change can begin to crumble.
This week it became clear there are things more important to the Susan G. Komen Foundation--the fundraising giant that each year during breast cancer awareness month virtually swathes the United States in pink, a la Christo--than ensuring women are able to access exams for early detection of breast cancer. In a word: Politics.
