SHAME ON YOU SUSAN G KOMEN

In case you haven’t heard, the Susan G Komen Foundation has pulled its funding from Planned Parenthood citing a new policy that prohibits funding organizations that are under investigation. Shame on you Susan G Komen, shame on you. Let’s disregard the hypocrisy of the fact that Susan G Komen gave 7.5 million dollar endowment to Penn State who is currently under federal investigation. Planned Parenthood is the victim of a partisan witch hunt orchestrated by Congressional ideologues. But I’m not here to state the obvious idiocy in Susan G pulling its funding to Planned Parenthood and subsequently cutting off critical cancer screening to women who might not otherwise receive care because of an unfair and asinine investigation by religious zealots in Congress. I’m here to point to this case as an example of how religion leads to ass backwards thinking and, therefore, counterproductive policy.

           

NOBODY IS PRO ABORTION!!! Get it? Let me say it again…nobody is pro-abortion. It’s the goal of every decent human being to limit and, ideally, end abortion everywhere. The way to get to that goal is not by criminalizing it. Criminalizing abortion only pushes it back into dark alleys and dangerous half-assed clinics. I hate to tell you, religious right, but women have been having abortions since the days of sipping pennyroyal tea and before. You don’t end abortion by shaming and criminalizing women, you only put the woman’s life at risk (though the book that the religious right bases their entire life philosophy on is a handbook for the subjugation of women, so I shouldn’t be surprised that said religious ideologues push policy that subjugates women).

The only way to minimize abortion is to offer family planning services, sex education, access to birth control, and support anti-poverty programs. Yet those who are the loudest blowhards against women’s rights to control their own bodies are the first to deny and cut access to these services. Their intentions lead to ass backward policy that only endangers more people. Planned Parenthood offers these services to a segment of the population that needs them the most. But now the religious right’s inability to think logically has gotten to the point of denying funding for breast cancer screenings to poor women so they can carry out a personal vendetta against Planned Parenthood.

The religious right’s policies only encourage women to endanger their lives because they’re stuck with no other options. The intention is there, but I would remind them that the road to perdition is paved with good intentions. Who are the ones who are really working to minimize abortion? Is it the ones who want to make women and doctors criminals, preach absurd abstinence only education, deny birth control, and eliminate anti-poverty programs—or, is it the ones who want to educate young people, offer family planning, and support programs that help children after they’re no longer fetuses? Which side are truly the pro-lifers? Think about that.

Yours,

Liz