Wow. I really just have no words. The Susan G. Komen “Race For The Cure” has stopped funding breast cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood, and John Aravosis says we all should have seen it coming:
Is it a coincidence that the Race for the Cure new senior vice president is a Republican anti-abortion activist?
2010: Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Karen Handel runs for governor on a platform of defunding Planned Parenthood.
2011: Republican politico and anti-choice activist Handel is hired by Susan G. Komen for the Cure, an organization that runs the annual breast cancer fundraiser “Race for the Cure,” and that gives hundreds of thousands of dollars to Planned Parenthood to conduct breast exams on women around the country
2012: Komen stops funding Planned Parenthood’s breast exams after pressure from who? Republicans!
Oh my God. I am so sick of you “pro-life” phonies. I am sick of you. Please, DIAF. Now. Just, go. I’m sure the anti-choice crowd will be all like, “yay, because every dollar the Komen Foundation gave to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer was a dollar Planned Parenthood could then spend on abortions,” and that is just so false and so wrong. No, it’s not. It’s a dollar that went to breast cancer screenings for poor women. Period. And now they don’t have that money.
Just, fuck you all. With a rusty saw. Sideways. I am so sick of your phony concern over precious little blastocysts. You’d rather grown, adult women die of undiagnosed breast cancer because a principle is more important than a person. What the fuck is wrong with you people?
Here, let me make it very simple for you:
Today Virginia State Senator Janet Howell — a Democrat, of course — protested a heinous “fetal ultrasound” bill with her own piece of legislation, one that requires men wanting erectile dysfunction pills to have rectal exams and cardiac stress tests. And I thought, yes about damn time we fought back, we put you pro-choice women in office for a reason. But even that doesn’t go far enough. Because this is a fucking war, it’s a war on women, women’s healthcare, and in particular on poor women. Because the rich women always get what they need. Always have, always will.
Really, I’m just waay beyond pissed off at this point. Outraged? That’s so last week. Contempt might be a good word for how I feel right now. And I must put any corporate marketers on notice: that “pink ribbon” bullshit is so over for me now. Any positive associations any corporation thought that pink ribbon symbol brought are just gone. Because it’s now a symbol of something bad: of being so married to a rigid ideology that you’d actually hurt women to save blastocysts. You politicized something that should never, ever have been politicized, and you pissed in your drinking well.
And I don’t want to hear that the Susan G. Komen Foundation is a different entity from the Susan G. Komen Race For The Cure or whatever bullshit excuse corporate HQ is going to give us. I don’t have the time to wade through your corporate organizational chart. It’s all the same to me. Someone hired this GOP anti-woman activist to run some division of Komen and now this is what we get. So fuck you.
You’re dead to me.
Southern Beale 
This was an awesome and righteous rant. I’m with you.
Awesome rant, and deservedly so.
I so agree with you, SB. And connected to this absolute outrage, here in TN, on page 7 of yesterday’s paper, it was revealed that our sanctimonious Governor has signed off on the Bill/Law that defunds Planned Parenthood from providing FACTUAL sex education at any public schools because of the LIE that claims PP uses tax dollars to pay for ‘abortions performed at their facilities’. And worse. The article pointed out that Haslam ‘kept his campaign promise’ to deny women and girls adequate information on human sexuality, how to access effective, safe and affordable birth control options. So I guess we will be able to give him all the ‘credit’ when the teen pregnancies and unwanted babies appear in the near future.
That happened last year. Just more proof that they aren’t attacking abortion, they’re simply attacking Planned Parenthood. If they really wanted to do away with abortion they’d be tripping over themselves to make sure women have access to Planned Parenthood’s services.
Just like the phony “small government” types who want to get rid of the Dept. of Education but think having a military 10 times bigger than the rest of the world’s is fine. Or the phony fiscal conservatives who think you can balance the budget by cutting the miniscule amount the Corporation for Public Broadcasting gets.
Phonies, every last one of them.
I work in cancer research, and this is such a betrayal by the Komen foundation that I’m almost embarrassed that we get money from them. I just made a donation to Planned Parenthood, and I urge others to do the same. We cannot let phony moralists condemn women to death from breast cancer because they don’t have access to mammograms.
Whether you can afford a donation or not, when you get to the polls this November, vote progressive because only the DFHs think women, all women, deserve health care.
estrogen challenged human here. why was handel hired in the first place? could something like this not have been foreseen? was it for her ‘business’ acumen? had the foundation been ‘npr’-ed before the hire?
As I understand it (from NPR), the founder of the Komen foundation was a big G. W. Bush supporter and a conservative.
That definitely hurts. The three day walk for the cure every January is a big deal in my home town. They always start in North San Diego County on a Friday. By 11:30 they have reached La Jolla. I always take a nice bike ride on La Jolla Boulevard and greet all the participants. Businesses set up pink displays, ribbons and balloons on the street. The walkers are gaily dressed in pink. It’s a wonderful celebration of the magnificence and great beauty of the female breast. Cops ride bikes. Bikers drone alongside the walkers. Water stations. They end up on the Mexican border. Great time for everybody. Raise a lot of money and raise awareness as well.
What a fucking shame! Why would one office within the organization have so much power. If she is VP, who the hell is the President?
I love women. Why do these fuckers hate them? Everyone came out of a woman. I do not understand.
JW
Fuckin’ A. Fire Karen Handel. I’ve been expressing my displeasure at every available outlet, hoping a large enough backlash will cause them to reinstate the funding, and possibly fire Handel.
Yeah, I’m idealistic, I guess.
Does anyone know a reliable way to find a list of the companies that do that pink ribbon marketing bullshit, so we can express our displeasure to them too?
I’m so with you. Last night, as soon as the story broke, it went viral. Hundreds of people flooded the main SGK FB page and left angry comments after their own posts (anything on their wall would be deleted). Folks are furious, as they should be. Am preparing a blog post on this and will provide a link to this wonderful rant. I agree that this outfit knew what they were doing when they hired Handel. Hopefully, hopefully, it will prove to be a major PR fiasco for them.
As someone who has donated to her cause — twice — and was slated to perform musically at benefits for her cause (but couldn’t because of other contractual obligations) — twice –, I am on board with this post. Never again.
“These people are NOT ‘pro-life’ — they’re ANTI-WOMAN!” — George Carlin
+1
YES. YES. YES. And I recommend people do what a friend of mine suggests: when you make your donation today to Planned Parenthood, make it in honor of the SGK Foundation. That way, the effing effers will get a card 🙂
That’s a fantastic idea. I’m going to steal it and put on my Facebook.
Cool! 🙂
There was a non-PP related dustup about the Komen org and another org in our fair state a year or so ago, but it was nothing as stupid as this.
When I tell my wife about this, that’ll be one fun-run shirt in our house that we’ll be cleaning the oven out with shortly. When either f us cleans the oven, hypothetically.
Still makes me wonder how Libertarians can be so friendly with Republicans. The Pro-Life movement is so against individual liberty I really don’t see how they can tolerate it except with an extraordinary amount of cognitive dissonance.
That said, I’m made somewhat uncomfortable by the picture you used Beale. It’s kinda false-equivalence since generally women don’t know they are pregnant until a blastocyst as long since developed into a fetus. So instead of an egg, it should be a chicken fetus, instead of an acorn it should be a sprout, instead of a silkworm, a thread (?) and the last picture should be of a fetus with hands, feet and eyes.
Yeah yeah, concern troll STFU and all that jazz. I’ll go away until some subject other than abortion shows up. Sorry.
I know, Ron Paul is virulently anti-choice and he also doesn’t believe in evolution, yet the Ron-bots keep telling me how I’m supposed to support him because he’s against the war. Fuck that shit six ways to Thursday.
Hey, Deep, I understand your point about the picture, but whatever abortion is, it’s not black and white. A picture of a fetus with hands, feet, and eyes, may still be a picture of a fetus who will not live due to genetic anomalies while a blastocyst may be completely compatible with life. I know a woman who had five abortions which I find abhorrent, but her only child was removed from the home by Child Protective Services, so there it is.
Anyway, what no matter what the forced-birthers say, this is about breast cancer and how Susan G. Komen just sold women out.
Good points greennotGreen. I didn’t really want to hijack this anyway, so thanks for not just flipping out on me. (And thank you Beale for not banning me.)
is there a sick plan to this? if more women aren’t tested for breast cancer, rates reported increase, therefore leading to more calls for donations to SKG?
even if that’s not their plan, this move by SKG is seriously messed up.
I just sent an email to Ms. Handel to let her know that the money I donate each year to support a Komen walker will now go to Planned Parenthood instead.
If donations to Komen drop due to this decision, she will be fired. Let’s make it happen.
Thanks for the rant – I have had a hard time with my rage about this. I signed a petition, sent them email, called and left a message, and donated $125 to PP. I am also upping monthly donation to them. I’m still mad.
@WpnsGrade Stupid had the best take: Komen wants poor women to die from breast cancer so it can prove it’s “pro-life.”
SB, I’m with you.
What the hell has women’s health to do with pro-choice? It’s all about hatin’ on women. Personally I like women very much.
Lots of you all seem to be pretty pissed about this.
Don’t get mad, get even.
JW
Call them what they are: Anti-Woman.
This needs to become a meme.
Handel also has known prior connections to the Congressthing who launched the bogus investigation of Planned Parenthood that is Komen’s rationale for this dick move in the first place.
Kind of telling that no small part of Komen’s funds are dedicated to an army of lawyers whose only job is to hunt down anyone who uses “For The Cure” in their name & threaten them with legal action unless they drop the offending phrase.
Ginandtacos.com has a good argument on this subject.
tl;dr: Komen was a scam to begin with so nobody should be surprised at the current events.
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