A Big Pink Stink

When I laid out a plan to run a 5K every month this year, I included the Susan G. Komen Race For the Cure in Sacramento as my May race. "Why not?" I thought. "It's a great cause and another opportunity for me to run."

I will not be participating.

In light of Tuesday's bombshell news that the Komen foundation had cut its grant funding to Planned Parenthood to help with costs for breast cancer screening for the women PP serves, I have decided that I can no longer, in good conscience, support an organization that arbitrarily makes up new rules, and so obviously panders to the extreme religious right.

Since Tuesday, I've done my share of figurative banging-my-head-against-my-desk reading comments all over the Internet from people who think that abortion and breast cancer have a link. (God, how I wish I was making this shit up.) This is not science, people, this is fear-mongering. Also, Planned Parenthood is not, for the love of all that is holy, an "abortion factory." I've been to one. Actually, I'm going back next week. I'm not pregnant, I assure you. I'm getting my blood pressure checked as a follow-up to the physical exam I had in November.

What? Going to Planned Parenthood for blood pressure?

Yes, my friends. Because Planned Parenthood will not charge my unemployed ass for care--they just ask that I give any donation I can. And I will, because I am grateful to them, and because I believe in their mission. Their mission, by the way, is not "Free abortions for all!! Everyone go have sex all the time!! Who cares about killing babies?!!" Their mission is simply to provide accessible, affordable healthcare to women and families in this great nation of ours...and to provide choice. In the end, all I ask of my country is that I have a choice when it comes to my body and whether or not it ever has children...and if I do decide to have any, how many and when I have them.

I am sad that Komen has politicized itself and cut ties with Planned Parenthood. This shows that the people running it are not for women's health, they are for making money. I've learned in the last few days that the organization has bullied other nonprofits for using the term "for the cure." This is not what I want to support! The increasing commercialization of the organization makes a joke out of the very real women I know who have fought breast cancer--women who, even though they are in remission, continue to deal with the ramifications of cancer on their day-to-day lives.

I want to support cancer research and to do what I can to eradicate it from our lives. Increasingly, I am deciding that this will come with better understanding on my part of environmental factors and early screening--screening Planned Parenthood is happy to provide to people like me, who can't afford healthcare at the moment.

So no more support for Komen, until they get back to their original mission of helping women. I still stand with Planned Parenthood.

You can donate to Planned Parenthood--it's easy!