The Randomness of Me

The Komen Foundation’s decision to pull funding for breast cancer screening at Planned Parenthood sites will hit low-income women of color hardest. Black women, for a variety of reasons, are diagnosed later and if they are poor or working poor lack health insurance and depend on the screening offered by Planned Parenthood. The decision will make it more difficult for women of all races but Black and Latino women will be particularly hard hit. Given the research Komen supports which identifies some of these disturbing trends in screening, diagnoses, and treatment, you’d think they’d be more proactive in supporting organizations like Planned Parenthood which make these necessary and expensive services accessible to low-income women.  

Komen pulled funding due to federal regulations that make it illegal to support organizations being investigated for mis-use of federal funds, which is the smoke screen the anti-abortion lobby moved with to discredit and de-fund Planned Parenthood. Detractors of the group claim it uses federal funds to provide abortion services that sparked an investigation in to the allegations.

This move by Komen could jeopardize its connections to Black and Latino health and civic organizations and compromise the health of millions of women across the country.  

Women are once again the political pawns of a male dominated lobby and it will quite literally kill us…