I just wanted to post this amazing graphic created by @AzureGhost:
Perfect.
by Imani Gandy (ABL)| 35 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
I just wanted to post this amazing graphic created by @AzureGhost:
Perfect.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 61 Comments
This post is in: Fuck The Poor
I know we’re wall-to-wall Komen, but they’ve finally gotten around to addressing their critics. Komen President Nancy Brinker’s YouTube damage control video is full of half-truths and errors of omission, but I want to focus on one of them (at 1:25 in the video):
Wherever possible we want to grant to the provider who is actually providing the lifesaving mammogram.
The notion that a organization providing breast cancer screening must have mammogram equipment to save lives is, simply, horseshit. First, mammograms are not indicated for women under 40, unless they have a family history of breast cancer or other factors (less than 2% of the total). The piece of equipment needed to perform the type of breast examination recommended by the American Cancer Society for women under 40 is available at every Planned Parenthood clinic: a trained provider’s hands. Doctors and other providers find cancer every day using manual exams. Lives are saved every day because a woman had a breast examination at Planned Parenthood. Here are the stories of just a few of those women.
Second, here in Rochester, we have a world-class mammography facility, staffed by a set of physicians who specialize in nothing but breast examination and some limited treatment. Every woman I know who gets a mammogram gets it at this site. I know of no gynecologist or family practitioner who has a mammogram machine. To think that Komen would restrict its grants to only a few centers in every city, and ignore the opportunities available to provide more access to the thousands of practitioners providing first-line care, shows just how crazy Brinker’s justification is.
Brinker is using a right-to-life dog-whistle, based on the idea that the medical care provided by Planned Parenthood is somehow incomplete or substandard. By the time she’s done whistling, Planned Parenthood is going to double or triple the amount of money they have at hand to do breast exams, especially when people like Michael Bloomberg start throwing down cash.
by Imani Gandy (ABL)| 86 Comments
This post is in: Vagina Outrage, I Read These Morons So You Don't Have To, We Are All Mayans Now
Downstairs, Zandar linked McMegan’s latest mind-yammerings in The Atlantic, and like some unstoppable idiot, I got out of the boat and read her article. Ostensibly the article is supposed to be a response to Jeffrey Goldberg’s article. In actuality, it’s her traditional steaming pile of brain-shit.
I know it’s been All Komen All Day over here, but with apologies to Monsieur Levenson, I want to highlight one of her “arguments” (such as they are):
Nor do I think that this [Komen defunding Planned Parenthood] is somehow fatal–indeed, the news of the Komen foundation’s funding withdrawal was met by an outpouring of donations that, as of this writing, has nearly replaced the lost funds. And I don’t think that’s an accident. If Planned Parenthood didn’t provide abortions–if it had decided, post-Roe, to continue doing all the contraception provision and pelvic exams, but to stay out of the abortion side of the business–many of the people who now send them large checks probably wouldn’t bother. I’d guess that a considerable portion of their donor base is making an expressive commitment to abortion rights, but of course, the flip side of that is people who make an expressive decision not to give them money.
What would make Miss 1500 Dollar Food Processor think that those who are donating money to Planned Parenthood are making an expressive commitment to abortion rights, as opposed to making an expressive commitment to women’s health for low-income women? I donate to Planned Parenthood because I appreciate the fact that when I was broke and had no health insurance in the early 90s, I was able to go to Planned Parenthood for non-abortion services. I’ve never had an abortion (not that there’s anything wrong with it). I suspect thousands of women have availed themselves of Planned Parenthood’s services without getting abortions. I am certainly pleased that an organization like Planned Parenthood champions the reproductive rights of women, and has not given in to Forced Birth Propaganda (the sort of propaganda to which Karen Handel, Nancy Brinker, and others have fallen prey.) Women have a right to decide for themselves what goes in and out of their bodies. The government has no right to force women to quarter fetuses in their wombs. Isn’t it against, like, the Third Amendment or something? No? Well it should be!
But, more important than offering abortion services (THREE PERCENT, folks!), Planned Parenthood is often the only option available for low-income women to obtain healthcare related to their lady-business. As asiangrrlMN noted in her post, 76% of their clients have incomes at or below 150% of the federal poverty level.
So fuck you very much, Megan McArdle.
UPDATE: Oh and there’s this too (not McMegan-related) from Daily Kos:
In 2000, when I first became a breast cancer activist, one of my first assignments was contacting the senators and members of Congress in my area to encourage their support for the Breast & Cervical Cancer Prevention & Treatment Act. The bill was to provide Medicaid coverage for uninsured women diagnosed through the Breast & Cervical Cancer Prevention & Screening Act, which had been passed several years earlier. IOW, the Treatment Act was necessary because uninsured women were getting no-cost breast cancer diagnosis, but still had no means to pay for treatment.
Sounds easy, right? You screen and diagnose them, you have to help them get treatment. Except one of my GOP senators didn’t see it that way, and he had another breast cancer group who agreed with him….
Upon calling my GOP senator and speaking with his aide, I was shocked to hear her tell me “Sen.__ can’t sign on as a co-sponsor to the bill because all the breast cancer groups aren’t in agreement on it.” Shocked, I asked her who was opposing it. She told me that Komen opposed the bill. When I asked her why, she explained that Komen felt that treatment for uninsured breast cancer patients should be funded through private donations, like the pink ribbon race. I was speechless, in shock. A phone call to another activist confirmed it was true – Komen was lobbying behind the scenes to kill the bill. A moment later, Sen.__’s aide called me back and begged me not to repeat our conversation to anyone, that she had given me the information by mistake.
Thus my lesson about Komen began in 2000. They spend a lot of money lobbying for a very different agenda.
Skeletons are tumbling out of the Komen Kloset.
[somewhat cross-posted at Angry Black Lady Chronicles]Komen-tastrophe: Beating a Dead McHorse [updated]Post + Comments (86)
by $8 blue check mistermix| 52 Comments
This post is in: Election 2012, Republican Stupidity
Mitt Romney is about to kiss Donald Trump’s ass by appearing at a joint endorsement press conference today. TPM has a few reasons why Trump’s endorsement probably hurts more than it helps. Presumably Romney had to show up and kiss up lest Trump endorse Gingrich, but taking a racist birther’s endorsement makes it harder for Mitt to appear like a reasonable Republican once the primary is over. A livestream for those who can take it here.
Update: It’s over. After noting that Trump is one of the few human beings on earth with more money than him (I doubt it), Mitt was like a little kid with a full bladder looking for a bathroom. He was in such a hurry to leave that he forgot to acknowledge his campaign chairman and his wife, so he had to go back to the podium to give them a shout out before beating a hasty retreat.
by Zandar| 128 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, We Are All Mayans Now
McMegan weighs in on Jeffrey Goldberg’s Komen-tary below. She uses the word “fungible” without irony, if you wanted a hint as to where she comes down.
I’m still snarked out from Rubin, myself.
Open thread then.
This post is in: Don't Mourn, Organize
What happened inside Komen:
But three sources with direct knowledge of the Komen decision-making process told me that the rule was adopted in order to create an excuse to cut-off Planned Parenthood. (Komen gives out grants to roughly 2,000 organizations, and the new “no-investigations” rule applies to only one so far.) The decision to create a rule that would cut funding to Planned Parenthood, according to these sources, was driven by the organization’s new senior vice-president for public policy, Karen Handel, a former gubernatorial candidate from Georgia who is staunchly anti-abortion and who has said that since she is “pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood.” (The Komen grants to Planned Parenthood did not pay for abortion or contraception services, only cancer detection, according to all parties involved.) I’ve tried to reach Handel for comment, and will update this post if I speak with her.
The decision, made in December, caused an uproar inside Komen. Three sources told me that the organization’s top public health official, Mollie Williams, resigned in protest immediately following the Komen board’s decision to cut off Planned Parenthood. Williams, who served as the managing director of community health programs, was responsible for directing the distribution of $93 million in annual grants. Williams declined to comment when I reached her yesterday on whether she had resigned her position in protest, and she declined to speak about any other aspects of the controversy.
But John Hammarley, who until recently served as Komen’s senior communications adviser and who was charged with managing the public relations aspects of Komen’s Planned Parenthood grant, said that Williams believed she could not honorably serve in her position once Komen had caved to pressure from the anti-abortion right. “Mollie is one of the most highly respected and ethical people inside the organization, and she felt she couldn’t continue under these conditions,” Hammarley said. “The Komen board of directors are very politically savvy folks, and I think over time they thought if they gave in to the very aggressive propaganda machine of the anti-abortion groups, that the issue would go away. It seemed very short-sighted to me.”
DougJ is right. These folks need to pay a hefty price.
You Already Knew This, But here is ConfirmationPost + Comments (303)
by Imani Gandy (ABL)| 68 Comments
This post is in: Vagina Outrage
The Virginia senate will most likely pass SB484, a mandatory ultrasound bill that requires women to undergo a potentially medically unnecessary and physically invasive procedure ostensibly to promote “informed consent,” but, in reality, to promote the right-wing’s forced birth agenda.
Unwilling to take this affront to women’s reproductive freedom lying down, State Senator Janet Howell attached an amendment to the bill which, in essence, said: “Up Yours!”
To protest a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion, Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell (D-Reston) on Monday attached an amendment that would require men to have a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before obtaining a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication.
“We need some gender equity here,” she told HuffPost. “The Virginia senate is about to pass a bill that will require a woman to have totally unnecessary medical procedure at their cost and inconvenience. If we’re going to do that to women, why not do that to men?”
The Senate will formally vote on the mandatory ultrasound bill on Tuesday.
The Republican-controlled senate rejected the amendment Monday by a vote of 21 to 19, but passed the mandatory ultrasound bill in a voice vote.
Howell said she is not surprised her amendment failed.
“This is more of a message type of an amendment, so I was pleased to get 19 votes,” she said.
The GOP is waging a War on Women, and mandatory ultrasound bills are a front in that war. 21 states have introduced such bills, and 8 states have passed them. The bills require that women undergoing abortion receive an ultrasound, a procedure which is often invasive. From the Houston Chronicle (writing about one such bill in Texas):
According to the Guttmacher Institute, 88 percent of abortions occur during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Because the fetus is so small at this stage, traditional ultrasounds performed through the abdominal wall, “jelly on the belly,” often cannot produce a clear image. Therefore, a transvaginal probe is most often necessary, especially up to 10 weeks to 12 weeks of pregnancy. The probe is inserted into the vagina, sending sound waves to reflect off body structures to produce an image of the fetus. Under this new law, a woman’s vagina will be penetrated without an opportunity for her to refuse due to coercion from the so-called “public servants” who passed and signed this bill into law.
The Virginia bill is slightly less pernicious as the bill that passed in Texas.1 (And when I say “slightly” I mean “infinitesimally” but I don’t think that’s a word.)
The Texas bill requires that the doctor describe the sonogram to the patient, in addition to submitting to a potentially invasive ultrasound. In other words, a woman who has decided to undergo an abortion must first be forced to listen to her doctor tell her about the size of the fetus, body features and presence of internal organs.
The Virginia bill does not add that extra “consultation” requirement (which opponents contend implicates the First Amendment because it requires doctors to engage in government-mandated speech.) Nonetheless, the Virginia bill is yet another step in the implementation of the Republican plan to install a tiny government in the vagina of every American woman.
Well, I’m with Senator Howell. If tiny vagina governments are going to be forced upon women, then we should demand that men be subject to tiny anal governments. Let’s see how they like it.
(h/t Addicting Info)
1 The Texas bill was initially blocked in district court, but the Fifth Circuit recently ruled that the bill is constitutional and can be enforced.
[cross-posted at Angry Black Lady Chronicles]