Komen Foundation decision reveals war against women

There is something troubling about the Susan G. Komen "For the Cure" Foundation's recent decision to halt donations to Planned Parenthood, even after the Foundation shamefacedly reversed their stance after a national storm of protest. What is troubling may at first seem a bit obscure, but here we see one of the most urgent issues facing American women: a war against abortion rights and women of the working class.

The Susan G. Komen Foundation is the most prominent national force fighting the epidemic of breast cancer. It is responsible for many public initiatives, such as the national Race for the Cure, and its popular pink bracelets have become a ubiquitous symbol in fundraising for the search for a breast cancer cure. While the Komen Foundation has faced many questions about how much money it spends on actual research that can lead to a cure, as opposed to what are essentially marketing campaigns, possibly the best impact it has had comes in the form of large donations to local chapters of Planned Parenthood, given with the purpose of funding mammograms for lower-income women who are likely to be without health insurance.

That is, it was until last week, when Komen abruptly announced that it was withdrawing donations to Planned Parenthood in accordance with its new policy to suspend funds given to groups under investigation at a federal or state level. Currently, Planned Parenthood is being subjected to what can best be described as a witch-hunt in the halls of Congress, launched by Florida Republican Congressman Cliff Stearns, to determine whether federal grants are being allocated to fund abortions. For a couple days at least, Komen seemed to be blissfully unaware that its decision could lead to the deaths of thousands of working-class women who have no other options for breast cancer screenings.

Let's consider for a moment the context in which Komen made this choice. Last year over a thousand anti-choice bills were brought forward at the state or national level with the intention of limiting or eliminating access to abortion. In North Carolina, for instance, laws have been passed to institute a new waiting period, and to force women to look at an ultrasound of the fetus, before aborting. In the same state, Republican Representative Larry Pittman recently called for a return of public hangings, with abortion providers being the first victims, declaring: "If murderers (and I would include abortionists, rapists and kidnappers, as well) are actually executed, it will...have the deterrent effect upon them. For my money, we should go back to public hangings."Republican presidential candidates Ron Paul and Rick Santorum speak openly about forcing women who have been raped to carry a pregnancy to term. In this atmosphere, the Komen Foundation's decision to withdraw funding makes it clear that they care more about bad publicity from the lunatic right wing than they do about poor women­—and are willing to throw them under the bus in exchange for an end to conservative criticism.

Of course, neither the funds given to Planned Parenthood by Susan G. Komen nor the federal government go anywhere close to abortions (and other groups that are under investigation did not have their funding cut) but that is beside the point. The point is that we are in the middle of a nationwide assault on the right of a woman to choose what is the right time for her to have a child. This assault, while launched by the crazier parts of the GOP, has been aided and abetted by Democrats, most significantly in the form of the Stupak Amendment to the Affordable Care Act of 2010, which forces women to buy separate coverage or go out-of-pocket to have an abortion and placed abortion rights in the role of political football to weaken health care reform in general.

Despite what the media may tell you, the right to abortion is far from being a question of morals. Christian morality has always been flexible, which is one reason why the Catholic Church did not see abortion as a sin until the middle of the 19th century. It is, rather, a question of control. A woman, especially a working woman, deciding if and when to have children challenges the ability of the ruling class to make her have children and bring them up gratis as part of the next generation of workers. It also means she is able to keep her job if her workplace is one of many that will attempt tofire her in the event she becomes pregnant, whether on purpose or by accident.

For wealthier women, the assault on abortion rights does not impose any restrictions, for the time being, on their ability to have an abortion. Most of them will be able to go out-of-pocket to cover the procedure, and will be able to travel the many miles to what may be the one facility in their state that will do it. Working-class women, in contrast, are most often unable to do either of these things. Enforcement of anti-choice laws requiring parental consent, lengthening the waiting period for the procedure, and so on are an attack on all women, but their effects will be primarily felt by the working class. In this light, Komen's decision was an utterly disgraceful concession to the anti-women and anti-working class assault that is currently playing out in legislatures across the country.

Komen's decision to continue funding Planned Parenthood mammograms in response to a massive uproar is welcome, but it also clarifies the nature of the struggle ahead of us. Quite simply we are facing a massive anti-woman (not pro-life) assault. To combat it means uniting with the new, more militant movements for women's rights (SlutWalk, for instance) and economic justice (most prominently, Occupy). In this struggle we can rely only on ourselves, and not on organizations like Susan G. Komen that claim to support women's health, and certainly not on the Democrats; both of these groups have sold out women's rights time and time again. They will happily do so again if we let them.

—Bill Crane '12 is an Asian studies major.