Let the Sluts Die of Breast Cancer

Let's just be perfectly clear: People who oppose abortion want women to die.

Or as TBogg put it:

I have to say that killing women with breast cancer before they might consider abortion sometime in their lives is one way to eliminate a woman’s right to choose.

I can't say this surprised me; I've always thought the Komen foundation was mostly interested in collecting big bucks and bigger publicity from the very companies that manufacture the toxic chemicals that cause breast cancer. But even so, it's egregious. Kevin Drum:

Planned Parenthood has been thrown under the bus by an unexpected group:

The nation's leading breast-cancer charity, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, is halting its partnerships with Planned Parenthood affiliates — creating a bitter rift, linked to the abortion debate, between two iconic organizations that have assisted millions of women. The change will mean a cutoff of hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants, mainly for breast exams.

....Komen spokeswoman Leslie Aun said the cutoff results from the charity's newly adopted criteria barring grants to organizations that are under investigation by local, state or federal authorities. According to Komen, this applies to Planned Parenthood because it's the focus of an inquiry launched by Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., seeking to determine whether public money was improperly spent on abortions.

Seriously? That's their story? They're planning to respond to every politically-motivated witch hunt led by some two-bit state legislator or grandstanding county commissioner by cutting off funding to the target of the investigation? If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.

This was a craven political decision, pure and simple. Joan Walsh said this: "The Komen Foundation just destroyed its brand, and it's going to be very, very sorry." Yep. What a loathsome move.

Loathsome doesn't begin to describe. From Digby, it's not just Komen - there's way more to this.

And I'd better not see any casual shrugging this off as no big deal.

Digby, last month:

One more time, from my friend DebCoop:

For women ALL Roads to freedom and equality - economic equality and most particularly the ability to avoid poverty START with control of their bodies. If they can't control how they get pregnant and when they will have a child then poverty is the result.

There is theory about something called the Prime Mover - the first action or the first cause. Well for women it IS reproductive rights. It precedes everything. It really is simple. Without the abilty to control your own body then you are a slave to everything else.

Frankly sexism, the need to control women's lives by controlling their bodies and the things that arise from it, are endemic to any social structure. It is ever enduring and even when it seems to be quashed it returns in another form. That is the story in the modern era of women's rights. One step forward after a long struggle - suffrage and then a step back. (And no way do I say that women are not complicit in their own subjugation. We are.)

I am reading The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin. In the epilogue he makes a point of saying that the loss of power and control is what the elite and the reactionary fear the most. More than a specific loss itself the fear the rising volcano of submerged anger and power. And for them it is most acutely felt compulsion for control in the "intimate" arena. That is the most vexing and disturbing of all.

It is why they want to control women. And controlling their reproductive lives is the surefire way to control them.

It is why abortion rights are absolutely central to every other kind of freedom.

Equal pay, discrimination, sexual harassment - none of it means shit if men control women's bodies.

Abortion rights are fundamental rights. Anyone who says anything different Wants. Women. To. Die.