{"id":52614,"date":"2012-02-01T14:04:48","date_gmt":"2012-02-01T19:04:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=52614"},"modified":"2012-02-01T16:09:59","modified_gmt":"2012-02-01T21:09:59","slug":"latest-blow-to-womens-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/politics\/latest-blow-to-womens-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Latest blow to women’s health"},"content":{"rendered":"

A famous breast cancer research charity, the Susan G. Komen foundation, has decided to pull its funding of free breast cancer screenings for underprivileged women at 19 of Planned Parenthood’s 83 affiliates. The Susan G. Komen board has apparently caved to the pressure of right-wing, anti-abortion politicians, citing a new policy barring funding for any groups under investigation. Planned Parenthood is currently under investigation by Congress.<\/p>\n

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This ‘investigation’ was instigated last fall by Republican Rep. Cliff Stearns of Florida, considered by many to be one of the most militant anti-choice members of Congress, after Congress failed to pass bill after bill to defund reproductive health services to women.<\/p>\n

It’s considered a sham because the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General along with state Medicaid programs already audit Planned Parenthood. These audits have not revealed any pattern of behavior that would warrant Congressional investigation. <\/p>\n

If the Susan G. Komen foundation’s board does not reconsider this decision, hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants that were used by Planned Parenthood to provide breast cancer screenings and other related services will be lost. <\/p>\n

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Credo Action puts the number at close to $1 million. Reacting to Komen\u2019s decision, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said, “It\u2019s hard to understand how an organization with whom we share a mission of saving women\u2019s lives could have bowed to this kind of bullying.” Unsurprisingly, Credo Action has begun a petition to pressured the Susan G. Komen board to reverse their decision; Planned Parenthood is taking a different tack, requesting emergency donations instead.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, this kind of runaround keeps a lot of focus and energy on reacting and fighting so as not to lose ground, rather than on actually moving forward with women’s health issues. After all, screening is important; searching for cures to cancer is important; education about healthy lifestyle choices and making healthy alternatives actually available to women in poverty is crucial. They are worth standing up for. <\/p>\n

But in all this I keep seeing a glaring omission: Who is looking into the environmental causes<\/em> of breast cancer (or any cancer)? Not all women who develop breast cancer have a family history of the disease as a factor, and you can read here<\/a> about one woman’s decision to start her own foundation to research that very thing. We need to clear a lot of bullshit out of the way of women’s health issues so we can get down to the fundamentals, and it’s time to start thinking in terms of whole systems, whole bodies, whole health and whole Earth. Clearly there are forces determined to stand in the way and keep all of us — male and female alike — as divided against ourselves as we are against each other. We need to see it for what it is, and cultivate the opposite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A famous breast cancer research charity, the Susan G. Komen foundation, has decided to pull its funding of free breast cancer screenings for underprivileged women at 19 of Planned Parenthood’s 83 affiliates. The Susan G. Komen board has apparently caved to the pressure of right-wing, anti-abortion politicians, citing a new policy barring funding for any … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":191,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[762],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52614"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/191"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}