PP isn’t the only place that can do them, but for millions of women who don’t have private health insurance but aren’t quite poor enough for government assistance, they’re the only place that will do them. It doesn’t matter how many places there are that are able to do cancer screens if none of them will see you because you don’t have money. The simple fact of the matter is that without PP, women who fall in the coverage gap (like myself in younger days) will go without screening for lack of access to other providers.
That is completely antithetical to Komen’s stated purpose for existing, and it is unacceptable.
You mean pap smears, breast cancera, STDs and that stuff? Sure. Their main target is poor, pregnant women (pre-natal care basically, ecos, supplements).
In the case of contraception, since they are conservative Catholics they don’t provide them, but refer them to the free access to contraceptives the state provides or to other M.D.s who would.
My point is that I’m sure there are other, non-PP organsations who also provide free/low-cost services (and they are also, in some places, the only ones) and those organisations could receive the funding and continue the work.
On the let’s-bash-SKG camp I’d like to say that if they wanted to stop donating to PP because they provide abortions, they should’ve said straight on and not go into “Chapter 5 Art. 45 of our by-laws …” and say “we won’t fund organisation that provide abortions, and we will know donate to XrT which doesn’t”.
Politicizing breast cancer? Nice work, assholes. I just made a donation to Planned Parenthood, and I’m sure thousands of others are doing the same thing. I wonder how quickly all those manufacturers with the pink packaging will be backpedaling out of that mode. I won’t buy those products any longer. Apparently the Girl Scouts have also disassociated themselves with PP, and won’t put any feminist names in their literature. So fuck them and their cookies.
Can you provide a cite for this? I’m not trying to be an ass. I just looked for information on this, and all I could find was some stories about how the GS denied a rumor that was circulating a few years ago that they were providing sexually explicit information to girls in conjunction with Planned Parenthood.
GS has made the news recently for publicly supporting the right of transgender children to join the organization, so it would surprise me if they dissed PP and feminism this way.
Slight hijack on the Girl Scout thing: The Girl Scouts have never had an association or partnership with PP. Local affiliates of the Scouts have done things (partnered, held workshops, etc), but the national and international organization has never partnered with PP. I don’t know anything about the feminist names claim, but that seems a weird thing for them to have a policy (written or unwritten) over.
I’d like a cite as well as the current backlash against girl scouts is how much feminism is in there current set of materials. And since I’m resource coordinator for a service unit, I see all the materials and it’s actually fairly radical, considering its girl scouts.
I was going by a comment left on the article by someone who is a local Girl Scout whaddyacallem. . .coordinator? Probably not the best source of information. My indignation over SGK’s move carried over, I guess.
I’m pro-life, and I think cutting funding to PP is idiotic. For the many reasons posted in this thread, PP is a vitally important resource for women (especially disadvantaged women). I’d prefer they didn’t do abortions, but I recognize that they probably prevent a lot more abortions than they provide due to education, birth control services, etc. And of course all the work they do that is not pregnancy related, e.g. breast cancer and other health screenings. Absolutely pathetic of SGK.
Thank you, thank you. How can a so-called “pro-life” organization be against something that saves lives and prevents abortions? What a bunch of sick, lying sacks of shit. That said, the backlash is proving to be quite entertaining.
At least a couple of executives have quit in protest over Planned Parenthood being targeted like this. Komen has annoyed people before in some instances, but this time they may have just gone too far away from their core mission to make a political statement. This does nothing positive for anyone and it’s clear that it’s just part of the Republican mission to crush Planned Parenthood any way they can for any reason they can make up. I can understand that Komen wants to appeal to (or not alienate) as many possible donors as they can and money from pro-lifers also counts, but it compromises their credilibity if they’re seen as putting political considerations ahead of the interests of women and they seem to have gone there in a big way. In that sense, the stem cell thing is arguably worse, but this was a horrendous decision all the way around. Meanwhile Mike Bloomberg says he’s going to give $250,000 to Planned Parenthood, which is the first thing he’s gotten right in some time.