Comments on: Bowing to anti-abortion politics, breast cancer charity cuts funds for screenings at Planned Parenthood

By: chgoliz

chgoliz — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 14:04:00 +0000

Yeah, but most of their charity goes to church-related organizations.

By: bjacques

bjacques — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 07:48:00 +0000

Poe’s Law!

By: That_Anonymous_Coward

That_Anonymous_Coward — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 01:51:00 +0000

No no they are all for choice, as long as they are the ones that get to make it for everyone else.

By: Politics on Demand

Politics on Demand — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:05:00 +0000

I’m praying that it is, pro life people need to keep their ethics to themselves and not shove it down the rest of our throats.

By: sugarsails

sugarsails — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:51:00 +0000

WRONG. No one is “pro-abortion”. No one promotes abortions, no one goes up to teenaged girls and says “You have no other option than to abort”. No one likes the idea of abortion better than not having unwanted pregnancies at all.
Shame on both? Pro-choice is the best way to illustrate the movement.

By: Joy

Joy — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:14:00 +0000

Note that they also don’t support the right of a pregnant woman with a dangerous pregnancy to have an abortion. Privileging the fetus over the woman also messes with an adult’s right not to be killed.

By: stevphen

stevphen — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:15:00 +0000

The terms should reflect the stance on the subject matter- ‘Pro-Abortion’ and ‘Anti-Abortion’. Obviously both side like the broad words ‘choice’ and ‘life’ because they have nice positive associations. Not sure which side switched their terminology first, but I’m sure it was becuase it polled better and then the other side would’ve done the same for the same reason. It’s only playing politics and it’s a joke. Shame on both.

By: zebbart

zebbart — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 05:17:00 +0000

What city do you live in? Maybe I can give you a chance to fulfill that desire.

By: Jonathan Roberts

Jonathan Roberts — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 03:31:00 +0000

I would consider myself a pro-life atheist, and I quite like Obama’s statement about making them ‘safe, legal and rare’. If the Wikipedia article on Hitchens is accurate, I would probably have similar views to him on that point (and only a few others – I imagine it would be very difficult for anyone to be completely in agreement with him). To be honest, I don’t have a huge amount of experience of the debate, but growing up in a conservative Christian environment I found the sort of squeamishness about sex to be counterproductive, while attending a number of events in university to raise awareness, I found almost the mirror image in a sort of ’condom only sex education’, where there was a squeamishness about discussing safe social practices regarding sex. I’d say it’s a dangerous precedent to frame the decision too much in terms of choice, as while there are questions of viability and so on, pregnancy is one time where a strict individualistic argument is too simplistic. We are dealing with a lot more than a ‘tumor’ or ‘appendix’ (I did hear these terms being used when discussing the issue with people) and the fact that the woman is needed for the baby’s survival doesn’t seem to be a particularly strong argument – the woman is still needed to a large extent after birth, while machines can keep a premature baby alive without the mother.

In my city in China, while abortion is very common, a number of people wait for the baby to reach full term, then leave them in a forest outside the city to die of exposure or be picked up (if you give a child directly to an orphanage you have to pay a fine, which many can’t afford). This is especially true if the baby is disabled in some way, as they probably won’t be able to support the parents later. The police go to the forest every week to pick up the living ones and bring them to the main orphanage, while the dead ones are disposed of. We’ve been looking after a boy from the orphanage for the last year and a half and are hoping to adopt him, while we’re not sure of his history it’s relatively likely he comes from that background.

By: Anandi Raman Creath

Anandi Raman Creath — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:39:00 +0000

We have always supported Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, because they focus on basic science and clinical research.

By: Jonathan Roberts

Jonathan Roberts — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:02:00 +0000

Can I gather then from your response that you refuse to support the military, death penalty etc. and don’t pay your taxes? Or are you in league with the murderers too?

By: Jonathan Roberts

Jonathan Roberts — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:51:00 +0000

I’m not going to defend this particular action, it seems pretty cynical and if the background is correct, it looks like Komen wasn’t just too weak to defend their support of PP, but also to be honest about the reasons. But you are firstly equating stopping funding with PP to be the same as actively preventing them from doing screenings, which supposedly makes them a sort of anti-humanitarian organisation. Komen spent 13% of its funding on screenings in 2009-10, only part of that went to PP. To be honest, if your statement that pro life groups ‘don’t seem to care about any fully-fledged human beings’ were true, they wouldn’t stop at PP, they would be campaigning to shut down Komen, which is kind of dedicated to helping fully fledged human beings. Next, you are not only tarring all of the pro-life organisations/lobby groups, but all the pro-life “people” with the same brush, based on decisions like this. Of course, “pro-life” groups need to be a lot more than just opponents of abortion to come close to deserving that name, but there are many, many examples of pro-life people dedicating huge amounts of time and resources to support the mother and baby (as CLamb has commented) as well as other work. Case in point: in our city in China, there is an international clinic run by mainly American and Chinese doctors. The doctors spend a third of their time actually running the clinic, a third running a separate free clinic for foster families and poorer people, and a third supporting the orphanages, hospices and HIV patients in the city. They also dedicate a proportion of their income to the work, and actively find families for orphans as well as fostering and adopting children themselves. They’re also definitely pro-life.

There’s definitely a lot of criticism that can be leveled at pro life groups, but by at least keeping it accurate and recognizing the positive things that are being done by both sides, even if (obviously) they don’t come from the same ideology, we could maybe move on from the ‘baby-killing mothers vs. woman hating lobby groups’ argument.

By: wygit

wygit — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:23:00 +0000

“It’s perfectly reasonable to ask why his principle doesn’t extend to supporting the military or the death penalty or various other government-sponsored devivification programs.”

Um, what part of the word “voluntary” do you not understand?
We ALL choose what charities we give our VOLUNTARY donations to.

They don’t put you in jail for refusing to give to Planned Parenthood, or Komen, or any other charity.
They DO put you in jail for refusing to pay your taxes, unless you’re rich enough to afford rather expensive attorneys.

I just hate seeing moderators trolling.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:47:00 +0000

Hahahaha, like they’re going to fire their VP.

Executives get fired for aggravated assholism and incompetence all the time. The problem is that they usually leave with millions of dollars in don’t-sue-us money.

By: trees123

trees123 — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:18:00 +0000

I’ll be waiting with baited breath for the Stop-SGK app for Droid á la the Stop SOPA app.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:55:00 +0000

What? He’s saying that he won’t send money to an organization that commits what he considers to be violence because it’s a matter of life and death. It’s perfectly reasonable to ask why his principle doesn’t extend to supporting the military or the death penalty or various other government-sponsored devivification programs.

By: C W

C W — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:43:00 +0000

“Many pro-life people are anti-death penalty, though.”

And a much smaller percentage of them are anti-war.

By: Quiche de Resistance

Quiche de Resistance — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:32:00 +0000

Yeah, you’re right, not all of them. Many pro-life people are anti-death penalty, though.

By: CCinBmore

CCinBmore — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:20:00 +0000

http://www.charitynavigator.org/

FWIW, I didn’t read your comment as smug. Plus, I’d been looking for a place to make this recommendation in this thread.

Last I looked, Livestrong was highly rated in terms of the ratio of donations to productive work. They, of course, aren’t limited to the breast cancer sphere. The America Cancer Society gets poor marks for their high overhead.

By: EH

EH — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:46:00 +0000

CW: i don’t think you’ve read the thread.

By: C W

C W — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:20:00 +0000

Generating “awareness” of any cause is futile without a plan, it’s only good for creating bureaucracy.

By: C W

C W — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:19:00 +0000

“Um… taxes aren’t voluntary?”

Depends on your dedication to your religious cause.

By: C W

C W — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:16:00 +0000

“applying this tit for tat logic to critical services”

Awareness > critical services.

That’s all they’re concerned with.

By: C W

C W — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:14:00 +0000

Social Conservative pro-life Catholics (aside from the born-again fundie/CDL variety) are way to the left of the current Republican Party. They see nuance.

By: C W

C W — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:07:00 +0000

They do refuse funding from “controversial” groups, Gays, Atheists, that might reduce their other donations, however that at least seems more consistent and less sleazy than the Pinkwashing.

By: C W

C W — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:07:00 +0000

“SGK’s mission is to raise awareness about breast cancer and I think they are fulfilling that admirably. ”

Who isn’t aware of Cancer? The only people who benefit from “awareness” campaigns are Komen, Corporations, and ribbon manufacturers.

By: C W

C W — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:04:00 +0000

“I bet if you did a poll on views on abortion the number of pro-life atheists would fail any test for statistical significance. Haven’t met or talked to one yet. ”

Wasn’t Christopher Hitchens pro-life?

There are plenty of South Park Republican types, angry skeptics but manage to internalize Social Conservative mores in their own smug sarcastic manner.

By: C W

C W — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:03:00 +0000

“They also support he right of adults to not be killed”

This is objectively untrue, unless you mistyped.

By: EH

EH — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:02:00 +0000

Not for this topic, specifically, but to put abortion and breast cancer (healthcare) into the sphere of debate. note that komen has not commented yet.

By: C W

C W — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:52:00 +0000

Just wait, “pregnancy crisis centers” are going to open up breast screening so the money goes entirely to fundamentalist pockets.