And others base their beliefs on the Torah or Koran or on other literature. Who are you to say the Bible is the only way? The is one God and many paths, although I bet you would disagree.

The woman came first, and the woman matters first. Her uterus was a part of her body before another thing inhabited it. The baby has a “right” to life, yes, but only insofar as the woman wants it there (although I am generally inclined to agree that in the third trimester, it is heartless to abort the baby — unless, again, the woman’s life is in danger, in which case it is more heartless to let her be the one that suffers). No woman ought to be forced to let another human being into or out of her body, be it a sexual partner or a child, that she does not wish to be there.

Hence the talk about sexual responsibility and using contraception to make sure unwanted fetuses do not manifest themselves, but the conservative side sadly does not like those either.

I don’t know if SGK can recover from this fiasco. I haven’t been a supporter of SGK beyond the random Race for the Cure I trotted a few years back. I’ve avoided the entire pink ribbon campaign because it’s so trite, even going out of my way NOT to purchase those products (and I love pink!). However, I made my donation to the national PP campaign with Bloomberg’s matching funds and next payday I’m donating to our local PP organization. I don’t need their services but others do.

How incredible that an organization of this size was so blind to the uproar it would create with this decision.  How dumb that its respone was so poorly crafted and so slow in coming. But how sad it would be if the damage were irreversible and the good Komen has done is lost in the conversations.  There are many lessons here, but one not to be minimized is the power of people who care.    Amazing!
 

Good they apologized, but damage is irreversible, as spotlight now shines on many more aspects of how they conduct their biz, which may not be what most people think.  And they simply have lost credibility by the incredibly poor handling of the decision and the many revisionist-history and inconsistent statements that people are way to smart to not see though.

I don’t trust them.  
But the bigger picture is this:  here is yet another example of what happens when a person or some organization is tricked into taking sides on the abortion issue.  There are people who want to force this issue because of the gains they derive from it, leaving damage in the wake.

They can force you to murder. They call it “the draft.” 

I have managed to mess up a post, which in any case apparently didn’t pass muster with the moderators. Allow me to try again.

1. This information is incorrect. Planned Parenthood does provide access to mammograms through the program funded by Komen. 

This whole incident exposes the sordid underbelly of big-money non-profits, who rake in millions of dollars for a benign cause celebre, yet behind the scenes are pursuing radical political agendas (on all sides of the political spectrum).  Their executives enjoy generous compensation and perks, and work very hard to uphold their “image,” all the while subsidized by taxpayers through tax breaks we bestow upon “charities.”  If any good comes out of this, perhaps it will encourage all of us to shine the light of day upon the organizations who take our money in the name of a good cause.

Outstanding analysis and engaging discussion; thank you Kivi! Have you heard yet about the Canadian documentary “Pink Ribbons, Inc.”? It premiered in Canada yesterday, it’s feature length, and preliminary reviews suggest a very unflattering look at SGK. Blurb from film: “Each yr, millions of dollars are raised in the name of breast cancer, but where does this money go and what does it actually achieve?” (trailer can be seen here: http://www.nfb.ca/film/pink_ribbons_inc_trailer/) I don’t know when the film will be shown in US, but word of the film and links to the trailer are already abuzz – one of the US Senators who signed the ltr to Komen mentioned it in a natl interview yesterday. Given how much damage Komen has already brought upon itself this week, will the film cause any further problems? And how do most nonprofits usually respond to such documentaries?

None of that information indicates that what is in the womb is not life. 

So basically, your’e arguing for atheism. I mean, it’s all about “whatever you think is reality is reality.” I’m a theist. i believe in one true God, I believe in your soul, and I believe in your soul-present-from-conception (which is a Christian doctrine). You want to legislate people like me based on your atheist beliefs. I think your religious beliefs are mistaken. What right do you have to compel me to behave as if I belonged to your religion of atheism? Prove that everything came from nothing and maybe I’ll listen to your bizarro ideas about souls and afterlives. 

Go to Planned Parenthood’s website and look up how much an abortion costs. It says $300-$950. You’re saying PP doesn’t “make” that money?? What happens to it?? They give it away? 

Um, who is compelling you to do anything, against your beliefs or otherwise?  Your stance is not equivalent to purplelibraryguy’s…you want legislation to restrict others’ choices according to your theocratic beliefs.  He isn’t advocating restricting your choices or beliefs at all.

To hopefully challenge your stereotype of a prolifer, I am also very involved in the anti-sex trafficking movement. Before I gave birth to my 2 month old, every week I would go to the jail to spend time, talk with, listen to, laugh with, or cry with the women there. Being former or current prostitutes, many were mothers, and many had had abortions. I didn’t ask about their past–that’s not why I was there– and had any of told me about a past abortion, the last thing I would have done is badger them. 

Whaaaat? Ok, if you’re trying to make fun of Christian theology, at least be factual about it. The Bible says Jesus is coming back in the clouds. He is not coming back as a baby (though if He were, I’m pretty sure the God who spoke the universe into being could ensure that he came through a pro-life mom). Also, fyi, it says every knee will bow and we will all see He is Lord. He is so much bigger than anything people could possibly ever mess up. 

No one is “defunding health care.” I think what you are referring to is socialized healthcare. I believe we should stay away from socialized health care precisely because if we adopt it and let the gov’t run it, we will ensure that a) health care is terrible for everyone, and b) our children pay massive debts racked up by a nation that refuses to balance its budget and insists on inefficiently running everything instead of entrusting its people to do so (would you rather go to the Post Office or Fed Ex? Or let’s talk about HUD, to name a few). As it is, it is illegal to deny anyone healthcare; therefore no one is being denied. However, in Canada, which has socialized health care, people literally die waiting in line (I have family up there, so don’t try to tell me this isn’t true). What we should do is find a health care system that works, not copy one that isn’t working. 

Millions of women have–for nearly a century–used PP for managing their health, especially in ways specific to women.  That includes pap smears as well as birth control, it includes mammograms as well as uterine cancer testing as well as blood pressure checks as well as abortions.  PP maintains clean, friendly, well-equipped clinics, and in TOO MANY COMMUNITIES they are the ONLY resource for women’s health.  The image of PP as a abortion provider is a myth that suits politicos who are easy with gambling with women’s lives.  People like Komen’s sister will ALWAYS be able to get reproductive care.  One of PP founder Margaret Sanger’s saddest stories from being a public health nurse among poor immigrants in New York City is of poor women (recognizing Sanger’s upper middle class persona) begging her for help refused them by doctors.  Those women knew that a UMC woman like her would know how to keep from getting pregnant.  Nancy Whozit and her circle of Republican socialites don’t give a damn about the poor, anymore than their great-grandmothers did a century ago.

It wasn’t pulled, the link above just has an extraneous piece of punctuation. If you copy and paste the link above, then delete the close parens at the end, the article pops up just fine. (FWIW, this glitch happens often; any punctuation you add at the end of a link gets added to the link and results in a 404 page, so if you click and get a dead end, it’s always worthwhile to check the tail end of the link and see if something looks weird.)

 I get the impression that you aren’t entirely clear about what a not-for-profit organization is, and how it differs from a regular business. By law, PP can’t make a profit the way a commercial clinic can. They aren’t allowed to amass wealth. They have rules that limit how they can spend the money they get, and they have to account for it all to the IRS. PP charges a sliding-scale fee for the services it provides, depending on the income of the patient. Most patients don’t pay the full cost of the services they get, because PP mostly serves low income people.

The fees from all the services, including abortion, go to pay for things like rent for the clinic building, the utility bills, salaries for the nurses, clerks, and administrators, the laboratories and radiologists, and all the medical supplies. They also go to pay the doctors who work at the clinics. Not all PP doctors are volunteers who donate their time. But the fees aren’t enough to keep the clinics going, which is why donations and grants are so important. There are few, if any, people who get rich working for Planned Parenthood.

I don’t know who is telling you these outlandish falsehoods about PP, but I do know that there are some people out there who are so invested in outlawing abortion that they will say anything to demonize it, including telling some pretty outrageous falsehoods. Personally, I have no respect for that sort of person. If the facts aren’t good enough on their own to support the argument, then maybe they need a better argument. I am not at all saying you are this kind of person, KS. I don’t think you are. But I think that whoever is passing this misinformation and lies along to you may be. You might want to look into that, and be certain that the source of your facts is genuinely trustworthy.

Well, let’s see.  The “Pro-life” position is characterized by wanting people to be stopped from having abortions–faced  by the choice of whether to have one or not, they should be constrained to make that choice as if they believed what you  believe rather than what they believe.
The Chinese government position is the reverse–the one-child policy forces people *to have* abortions.  But I’m not the Chinese government; I’m perfectly willing to let you run your pregnancy according to your own beliefs and *not* have an abortion.  As Kibbywolf points out, your attempt to make people do things your way is not the same as my willingness to let you do things how you want even though I might do things differently.