Moments ago, the Susan G. Komen Foundation issued a formal apology for their recent decision to discontinue more than $600,000 in annual funding for cancer screenings and prevention services at Planned Parenthood. After an unrelenting outcry from the general public and grassroots activists across the country, the Komen Foundation found itself facing a nearly unprecedented public relations nightmare.

In its press release, the Komen Foundation has promised that only “criminal” investigations will disqualify potential grantees, not political ones. The original criteria (written in late 2011, possibly for the exclusive purpose of ending Planned Parenthood funding) disqualified Planned Parenthood from receiving Komen Foundation funds since it is the target of a political “investigation” [read: “witchhunt”] led by Rep. Cliff Stearns. (What that means for Komen’s $7.5 million grant to Penn State remains to be seen, given the criminal and legal issues for which they are under investigation.)

The Komen Foundation’s statement says that it “will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.” And that’s where we hit the real problem. From the beginning, the Foundation has been clear that no current grants will be affected. As such, this is NOT a reversal of any kind.

Planned Parenthood will remain “eligible” for future grants, but the Komen Foundation has made no commitment to continue funding or to preserve its relationship with Planned Parenthood in years to come.

After all, when Komen Foundation founder and president Nancy Brinkler appeared on MSNBC earlier this week she said the decision to discontinue funding had nothing to do with the Congressional investigation. Instead, she argued that the Foundation was refocusing its efforts away from breast cancer prevention education and towards "metrics" and "direct service" grants.. Over the past five years, Komen Foundation funding has enabled Planned Parenthood to provide more than 170,000 breast cancer screenings, and they have provided 6,400 mammogram referrals – that this doesn't qualify as "direct service" would surely come as a surprise to the thousands of low-income and young women whose lives have been saved by these services.

So the question remains: Which of the Komen Foundation’s many reasons to sever ties to Planned Parenthood was really behind this decision? Was it a Congressional witchhunt? Or was it new grantmaking priorities?

Or, as we’ve known all along, is this really about abortion? Komen’s blatantly political decision this week followed years of pressure from anti-abortion activists, asking women – primarily low-income and uninsured women, women of color, and young women – to pay for the Komen Foundation’s cowardice with their lives. (In fact, this decision was made over the objections of the scientific staff at the Komen Foundation; their top public health official, Mollie Williams, immediately resigned in protest.)

In fact, the Komen Foundation has also announced that it will stop funding any and all breast cancer research related to stem cells, it is abundantly clear that the Foundation’s decision-making has become infused with politics, placing far-right ideology over science and saving women’s lives. Today’s apology and accompanying PR spin hasn’t changed that at all.

Whether the Komen Foundation’s statement dos in fact signal a reversal of its policy towards Planned Parenthood remains to be seen. It is entirely possible that they intend to fund Planned Parenthood cancer screening services in the future, and we hope they do. It is equally possible that this is simply a public relations move designed to diffuse a lucrative brand from spiraling out of control – and the Komen Foundation will quietly reject future grant proposals from Planned Parenthood once they are out of the media spotlight.

The true lesson this week is the power of grassroots activism – both online and offline – to force a major corporate entity to be accountable for its own actions. This is an enormous victory – for Planned Parenthood, for the movement as a whole, and most of all for advocates like you. This will not be the last time action and anger will be harnessed to protect the sexual and reproductive health of women and young people in America, but it is a striking reminder of how powerfully effective our collective voices can be.

By now many of you have heard about the decision of the Susan G. Komen Foundation to discontinue more than $600,000 in annual funding for cancer screenings and prevention services at Planned Parenthood. The decision was clearly political, motivated by pressure from the anti-choice movement to sever ties from Planned Parenthood. The Komen Foundation put politics above women’s health and we, as a movement, have responded. From Facebook posts, to constant Twitter updates to an outpouring of donations to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings at local clinics, our movement continues to show is resilience and commitment to putting people’s lives first. We have proven that we will continue to do what is right and defend access to reproductive health services.

The outpouring of grassroots anger at this decision and the energy directed at defending Planned Parenthood has been immediate, powerful, and inspiring. One longtime activist said it best. If you agree, sign on and share it:

This is for all the anti-choice, anti-women people out there.

Listen up.

You can spend every minute of every day trying to force the rest of us to live by your ideology. You can go after federal funds for health care and pressure private organizations like the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation to stop funding breast cancer screenings for poor women. You can try to make it impossible to get birth control.

But you know what you can't do? You can't win. You can't break us. Planned Parenthood isn't just a family of organizations. It's a movement. It's women and men of all ages who believe that health care — including reproductive health care — is a basic human right. We are millions strong. We are everywhere. We act, we give, and we do whatever it takes to make sure that Planned Parenthood is there for the women, men, and teens who rely on them.

Know this: When you go after Planned Parenthood and the people they serve, you go after ME. I stand with Planned Parenthood. I stand with them against anyone who wants to stop women from receiving the health care they need. I stand with them today, tomorrow, and for as long as I need to.

CLICK HERE to stand with Planned Parenthood and add your name to the declaration of support.

Here at Advocates for Youth, we stand with Planned Parenthood in the fight to provide all people, especially young people, access to basic reproductive health care services.
I hope that you will join us.

Julia Reticker-Flynn
Youth Activist Network Manager
Advocates for Youth

by Bianca Laureano


It’s been two great years and for my 100th plus post I thought it would be a good time to share some of my favorite columns I’ve written. Do you have a favorite Media Justice column? If so tell me what it is! (Editor's note:  Amplify editors name their own faves after the jump!) One of the reasons I like to do these reflections is because I get to see how I’ve evolved as a writer, media consumer, and in sharpening my own media literacy skills. For example, some of my earlier writings I used the term “female” a term that speaks more to describing someone’s sex assigned at birth versus their gender, such as “woman”. Although at times it is embarrassing I did this, it’s a reminder of how I’ve grown, what I’ve learned, and I’m not ashamed of having my learning and knowledge production public for others to see and learn from as well.  

LatiNegr@s to Look Out For in 2010 
This article is one that is very close to my heart. It marks the beginning of my work dedicated specifically to LatiNegr@s (also known as Black Latin@s/Afr@Latin@s, etc.). This was one of the original articles I wrote that lead to the creation, implementation, and management of The LatiNegr@s Project. This is a virtual project that recognizes and represents LatiNegr@s year round. We started two years ago especially to include LatiNegr@s into Black History Month, Women’s History Month, and Latino Heritage Month celebrations. The LatiNegr@s Project is also in its second year and we have expanded to a team of 4 and have over 180 pages of content, that’s over 1000 articles, images, definitions, syllabi, fotos, commentary, maps, and videos. Many of these have been reader/viewer submissions, which means not only the 4 of us managing The Project have generated content, but others submit as well. If you are interested in checking out The LatiNegr@s Project , submitting,  or having us come to your school or organization visit us today.

Man Up, Woman Down
This article I am very proud of because it was a challenge for me to write it as well. I really did some introspective work in examining my own ideas on violence, self-determination, and what it means to claim violence at certain times. These questions stay with me since this article as I think more and more about liberation, struggle, decolonization, revolution, and realize that we are surrounded by all of these right now in different ways. I still don’t have too many answers to these questions but I think sometimes the questions are more important than the answers.

More...

Does it make sense for the world's largest breast cancer charity to stop giving money to the world's largest reproductive health care system?  

It doesn't to me.  But as reproductive health care advocates and many others were shocked to learn yesterday, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation has announced that it will stop giving breast cancer screening and prevention grants to Planned Parenthood.

Anti-abortion activists had been lobbying the Komen Foundation for some time, saying that Komen shouldn't give money to an organization that provides abortion services.  Never mind that Komen's money was funding 170,000 breast exams and 6,400 mammograms a year (and no abortions).  Never mind that abortion is a legal and safe procedure which one in three women will experience in her lifetime. It's the anti-abortion party line that if a place performs abortions it should stop receiving any money from anywhere, even if that means fewer women will be screened and more women will be at risk for breast cancer.  Another example of that movement's fabled concern for women's health. 

But what is one to make of the Komen Foundation's cravenness?

It looks like they ran the odds and decided that they'd make or save more money by cutting off Planned Parenthood than by continuing to fund them.  Isn't that really the only conclusion - that concern for donations rather than concern for needy women's health drove the decision? 

As Amanda Marcotte notes in Slate, Komen's cheery pink veneer has been chipping away this last year, when we learned they've been taking legal actions against other charities that use the word "cure."    They've been under fire for the commercialism of their "everything pink" campaigns, which Barbara Ehrenreich famously attacked as bullying and sexist over a decade ago.  They also increasingly face the accusation that their focus on screening is misguided.  This latest announcement is another black mark on the charity, and a potential game-changer in a nation where a majority of people believe abortion should be not only legal but available. 

Most people who "race for the cure" have been impacted by breast cancer and simply want to help keep other women from getting breast cancer.  They want to help women who need help - women who, for instance, get their medical care from Planned Parenthood because they're uninsured and/or can't afford other care.  I think a reproductive health activist has to conclude that there is a better place for your donation dollars than Komen; for instance, the Planned Parenthood Breast Health Fund, created as a response to Komen's fund withdrawal.  

Each week, I’ll be posting a list of the most news-worthy and/or inspirational, informative, well-written, thought-provoking, and/or unique posts of the week. While every post and every contributor is valuable to our community, these are the blogs that I feel are must-reads.

January 22- January 29

Stats this week: 26 posts by 14 writers

Trust Women Week: Bianca’s story- by Media_Justice

Inside this post:

Bianca describes her work as an abortion doula.

Dying of Red Tape: Ban on Federal Funding for Syringe Exchange Programs Reinstated- by one_for_all

Inside this post:

HIV prevention groups will no longer be able to use federal funds to buy needles—thus limiting one of the most effective ways of stopping the disease. By cutting funding for needle exchange programs specifically, they condemn women, people of color, poor people, queer people, and sex workers to disease and death.

Tennessee Bathroom Bill…Down, But Not Out- by Jordan

Inside this post:

A Tennessee bill that would ban transgender people from entering the bathroom or dressing room of the gender they identify as was thankfully put aside in the state’s Senate because (correctly) “there were other issues to be addressed.”


Thank you to everyone who posted a blog this week! You are part of what makes this community great!

~ Samantha
Community Editor

___________________________________
My posts this week:
Survey Results: How We Describe Others
Target card calls pregnant girls whores

by Denicia Cadena, Young Women United
Photos provided by Gabriella Lemas-Sanchez

On Tuesday, January 24th Young Women United rocked the New Mexico Capital with Show Some Love, a day of action for young parents. Our message echoed through the roundhouse: young parents deserve respect, trust, and recognition. With over 50 young parents from across New Mexico, this day was about centering the voices of young families and their allies in pushing for change. YWU has always understood that negative and inaccurate descriptions about young parents and their children have a harmful impact on these families. Too often, young families living under stigma and shame don’t have the resources they need to thrive.

Young parents want our state to know--our families deserve better than this. As a step forward, young mamas from many parts of New Mexico collectively wrote a legislative memorial to establish a NM Day in Recognition of Young Parents. YWU is also proud to support ACLU of New Mexico in their memorial, which will establish a task force to assess and eliminate barriers that pregnant and parenting teens face in completing their educations. Read the memorial here.

Show Some Love built momentum for these memorials and created a space for young parents to speak up and speak out. Our press conference pulled a captive audience to hear these parents share the strengths of their families. Our legislative visits connected these young people to some of the state’s most powerful legislators.

More...

In Friday's Washington Post, Christina Hoff ommers questioned CDC findings on sexual violence.  Calling the study "careless" and saying it relies on "the familiar jargon of feminist theory," Sommers even puts the word sexism in distasteful air quotes, as in, "the report also called for more research on 'sexism.'"

Sommers takes issue with the phasing of the CDC's question about sexual assault:

In a telephone survey with a 30 percent response rate, interviewers did not ask participants whether they had been raped. Instead of such straightforward questions....[the sample was asked]  “When you were drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent, how many people ever had vaginal sex with you?” A majority of the 1.3 million women (61.5 percent) the CDC projected as rape victims in 2010 experienced this sort of “alcohol or drug facilitated penetration.”  

What does that mean? If a woman was unconscious or severely incapacitated, everyone would call it rape. But what about sex while inebriated? Few people would say that intoxicated sex alone constitutes rape. 

So, first of all, I don't think the CDC was unclear in its phrasing.  It's asking sample participatns if they were too drunk or high to consent.  Only they can answer that.  And in its sexual violence toolkit, the CDC is again quite clear on the topic:  

What is meant by “alcohol/drug facilitated penetration”?
This represents times when a victim was sexually penetrated but they were unable to consent to it because they were drunk, high, drugged, or passed out from alcohol or drugs. This includes times when a perpetrator intentionally drugged or spiked the drink of a victim but without the victim’s knowledge, and cases where the victim may have voluntarily used alcohol or drugs, but the perpetrator took advantage of the victim when they were too intoxicated, high, or passed out to consent to sex.  (Emphasis mine)

But it's this comment from Sommers that I'm more troubled by:

The CDC effectively set a stage where each step of physical intimacy required a notarized testament of sober consent.

No, they don't set that stage, and Sommers knows they don't.  What the CDC has done is ask women if they were raped.  They include "Someone had sex with you when you were too inebriated to consent" as a definition of rape.  

But what Sommers is really attacking isn't a specific CDC question, it's attempts to normalize enthusiastic consent - a culture where what "sex" means is that both parties discussed what would happen ahead of time, and communicated throughout the experience, changing what they were doing as needed - including stopping if they weren't totally sure the other person wanted it.  

I've heard snide comments like hers many times -- beginning in 1993, with Antioch College's famous dating policy.  At the time it was greeted with mockery.  The very notion of having to ask each time you did anything!  In 2006, Gettysburg College's sexual misconduct policy (in short, "Effective consent is informed, freely and actively given, using mutually understandable words or actions which indicate a willingness to participate in mutually agreed upon sexual activity") was also met with indignation.   

But what is so funny, what is so absurd, about requiring mutual consent?  In this article about good sex education, Al Vernacchio brings up a "pizza metaphor" to encourage good communication around sex:

“If you’re gonna have pizza with someone else, what do you have to do?” he continued. “You gotta talk about what you want. Even if you’re going to have the same pizza you always have, you say, ‘We getting the usual?’ Just a check in. And square, round, thick, thin, stuffed crust, pepperoni, stromboli, pineapple — none of those are wrong; variety in the pizza model doesn’t come with judgment."

He's talking about decision-making around sex, but it extends to mutual consent as well:  before you get a pizza, you both have to agree you want pizza.  And you have to discuss several other points as well.  You have to check in.  

When people make that "Better call a lawyer before you make out with someone these days" joke, what I hear is "Having to ask someone before you do something sexual with them is silly/burdensome/wrong."  Tell me this:  How does spreading that attitude help the "real victims of sexual violence" Sommers is so concerned about?  

I think people mock "enthusiastic consent" model because they liked the old way, where boys insisted and girls resisted.  Where you teach that both parties must enthusiastically consent, you are saying that women have to say what they want or do not want out of sex.  And if there's one thing social conservatives can't handle, it's a sexually empowered woman.  

At a Target store in California, a shopper browsing the greeting card aisle was intrigued by a card that read, “Heard you’re pregnant,” but was shocked when inside the card all it said was, “Whore.”


















 

In the handful of articles I found on this story, I couldn’t believe that the consensus was that either the card was funny or that it didn’t matter and anyone who was offended should chill out and get a sense of humor. Really? Shaming and bullying young, sexually active girls and young women about an unplanned pregnancy is funny? It’s no big deal that a girl was called a whore? Do you think she deserves it because she dared to make a choice of having sex without your approval?

Because let’s be clear here: this is targeting young, unmarried women and girls. Who would even think to call a married woman a whore for getting pregnant? Who assumes that a married woman getting pregnant is automatically a bad thing that she should be called names for? And who would call an older, single woman a whore for getting pregnant? Married women and older, single women are socially allowed to have sex. The fact that they have sexual desires and act upon those desires is understood and accepted. The same respect for female sexuality is unfortunately not nearly as common for young women.

When a young woman becomes pregnant, it’s as if she has done something horribly wrong. Calling her a whore signifies the stereotypes that she has slept with several men (which is also seen as something horribly wrong for a young woman) and that she must have low self-esteem because it is presumed that she lets men use her (which, though it hardly stops anyone from slinging this insult, also unfairly makes men out to be animals who only want instant-gratification sex and then discard the girl without further thought).

Calling a girl a whore for the fact that she had sex and accidentally got pregnant devalues the choice that girl made to have sex and devalues her ability to make a positive sexual decision. When someone is called a whore, they are being told that the way they have chosen to express and practice their sexuality is wrong. Teenage sexuality is not inherently wrong. But when we have a culture that believes that it is, then the girls who get outed for having sex by becoming pregnant face much harsher torment and ridicule than all the other sexually active girls. They somehow get more blame and are more publicly shunned.

More...

This week Tony Perkins of the anti-gay hate group Family Research Council denounced the BioWare video game company's decision to allow same-sex relationships in the new online role-playing game Star Wars:The Old Republic.
Said Perkins:

In a new Star Wars game, the biggest threat to the empire may be homosexual activists! [Ed. note:  Vomit]  The new video game, Star Wars: The Old Republic, has added a special feature: gay relationships. Bioware, the company that developed the game, said it's launching a same-sex romance component to satisfy some complaints. 

He later goes on to observe that "homosexual activists" are celebrating the news.

The complaints had come when BioWare claimed that there was no such thing as gay in Star Wars, and that therefore, those words would be censored out of forum discussions of the Star Wars games.  I'm sure someone more familiar with the Star Wars canon could say how true this is, but the fact is that an unknown percentage of human players certainly are LGBT.  If there are going to be romantic relationships in any game, it's weird to restrict these to heterosexual ones.

But let's step back a second and think about Tony Perkins' call to parents to flood BioWare with homophobic email.

In SWTOR, which is rated T for teen, you can:

 - "possess a morality at any point along the light/dark spectrum"
 - engage in bloody combat
 - lie, steal, cheat
 - have multiple romantic partners who do not know about one another
 - choose to identify as entirely evil and committed to world domination
 - be a professional assassin - that is, murder people for money

You can do this stuff in a lot of games.  The "moral spectrum" is a major component of many highly rated games.  Yet what has the Family Research Council elected to complain about?

That a boy can date a boy or a girl can date a girl.  Priorities, people.  Every hate group has theirs. 

EDITOR'S NOTE: Trust Women Week overlaps with the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and reasserts our firm commitment to reclaiming the future of reproductive decision-making in 2012. Throughout the week, Amplify will be honoring women's experiences and voices by featuring a different story from The 1 in 3 Campaign January 21-27.

As we close out our week of storytelling, Harriett talks about abortion access before Roe v. Wade and the terrible impact of income inequality on women's ability to access safe abortion care. In October, Harriet was featured in The San Francisco Chronicle sharing her own abortion story and her hope that more women who have had abortions will come forward. She is also the founder of California Republicans for Choice.

1in3Campaign.org: Harriett - Part 2 of 2 from Advocates for Youth on Vimeo.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

HARRIETT: Before abortion was legal here in California – and we were one of the first states – we wealthy women would go to a pro-choice doctor, a pro-choice obstetrician and explain the problem, why she couldn’t have the child.

Then he’d say, “Well, can you afford to go to Japan, fly to Japan?”

And she said, “Yes, we could swing that.”

And he said say, Then you call Japan Airlines and you ask for Miss Suzuki. You don’t have to use the ‘A Word’ you just say Miss Suzuki. All she handles are the abortion package deals, and that involves air and ground transportation, meals, lodging, and surgery. And thousands of women are doing this.”

And yet a young woman, or an older woman without money, they would have to go – if they really wanted one – they’d have to try to find somebody in the Bay Area who could do it…Go to Mexico…It’s very chancy and terribly unfair.

The biggest difference I see is that it’s even for everybody, because in California low-income women can get abortions. We got Pete Wilson to change his stand on that. That’s when I was running California Republicans for Choice and we had…Low-income women can get abortions.

And there’s some thing else that…You know, we who have money, we don’t understand really what it’s like to live when you’re really poor. And so many people just can’t understand that, and I think that’s a terrible thing. They’re pushing something…

All of them who are making these laws have plenty of money to get their wives, sisters, children to where they can have a safe abortion if they wanted. But they’re not going to suffer. Low-income women are going to suffer. And that’s just terribly, terribly unfair.

The 1 in 3 Campaign is a grassroots movement to start a new conversation about abortion — telling our stories, on our own terms. Together, we can end the stigma women face each and every day and assure access to basic health care. As we tell our stories and support our family and friends as they come forward with theirs, we begin build a culture of compassion, empathy, and support. No one should be made to feel ashamed or alone. It's time for us to come out in support of each other and in support of access to legal and safe abortion care in our communities.

Share the 1 in 3 Campaign videos — or your own story — with three other people. And click here find out how you can bring the campaign to your campus or your community.
It's time to start the conversation.