(h/t ABL WARNING: Graphic images and language)
My mother died of breast cancer. I'm sure the vast majority of people reading this can point to an aunt, a cousin, a sister, a best friend who has had the disease. So far, the estimated new cases and deaths from breast cancer in the United States in 2012 (and this is just February) is 226,870 women and 2,190 men with new cases of cancer and 39,510 women and 410 men who have died from the disease. Many of these women, and possibly even men, are poor and have little access to proper health care or support in a country where health care is still only for few who can afford it, and many of them owe their lives to finding the disease early through breast screening provided by Planned Parenthood.
But it seems the anti-abortion faction of the right wing isn't just trying to impose their moral, political and religious values on women's wombs, they don't give a damn about the health of women's breasts, either. The Susan G. Komen Foundation has found itself under fire during this past week over its decision to withdraw funding from Planned Parenthood, thereby depriving thousands of women from life-saving breast screening. But one voice in the many opposed to the gutless capitulation of the Komen Foundation, and specifically Komen's CEO, Nancy Brinker, is that of Linda Burger, a 56-year-old breast cancer survivor in Las Vegas, who was so appalled she made a video. It is not for the faint hearted, for as Linda says in this video, cancer makes you frank, it makes you say what you feel. It give you the courage to face a camera and bare the scars from a mastectomy for the entire world to see. This brave, beautiful, kick-ass woman pulls no punches, she's a hero through and through.
Watch this wonderful video. Then send it to an aunt, a cousin, a sister, a best friend. Send it to your Congressman. Send the Komen Foundation the message that politics and religion have no place in providing health care for women who have nowhere else to turn. They can take their plastic pink ribbons and shove them up Ari Fleischer's nose. Then send a donation to Planned Parenthood - help keep them alive, so that they can help keep us alive.