Komen, Just in Case you decide Once Again to Screw Planned Parenthood: Some Helpful Sisterly Advice, Hell No!!
Dear Sister (i.e. Komen Organization),
Like many of your supporters, I was utterly disheartened by your hasty decision to severe ties with Planned Parenthood because of the unfounded legal witch hunt of Pro-life Congressman Cliff Stearns launched. As one of the few national health organizations that support women and girl’s health, it deeply saddens me that you, like a fearful child afraid of scolding, scurried blindly away from another sister health organization in her time of epic crisis. Though your mission may not explicitly say “sisterhood” or seek to build “sisterhood” among women, your focus on women’s breast implicitly makes that claim. So, I am writing you this letter as a sister holding another sister albeit sister organization (i.e. Komen Organization) accountable for how she treats another sister organization (i.e. Planned Parenthood).
Let me just say this point blank, you don’t get to scurry away from Planned Parenthood. As a sister, you dig your heels into the ground and say,
“These are my boundaries, you can talk about my Jesus . . . the clothes I have on, but HELL NO don’t you dare talk about my sister (i.e. Planned Parenthood) . . . for if you cross that line I will not cower away and lick my wounds . . . I will fight you. Do you hear me? I will fight you.”
It is this spirit of fighting for your sister organization, Planned Parenthood, which you seem to lack even though you rescinded your decision not to fund Planned Parenthood. And, let me also say that no man, Congressman Cliff Stearns, or institution, the Right, should be able to take you, a national women’s organization that touts support among thousands of women in the US, away from your sister organization Planned Parenthood. For if they are able to do so, you become no better than the many backstabbing melodramas that confound women on reality TV shows like Mob Wives or Atlanta House Wives. You become another example of women not being able to work together. You become what men have always thought women to be “weak.” Honestly, you do more harm to womankind than the breast cancer you work to
eradicate.
Furthermore, when you, a national women’s health organization, run away from the fight leaving your girlfriend to stand alone you fail to teach our daughters how to maintain their position in a street corner brawl where their reputation, occupation, family life, self-esteem, and most importantly their inner voice are on the line. You don’t teach them how to stay in a battle . . . how to endure when people “scandalize their good names” because they do not like them . . . how to deal with not having a cadre of friends because they tell it like it is and they don’t hide behind passive aggressive actions and behaviors . . . how to negotiate leading people when they utterly refuse downright protest being lead . . . you teach our daughter to run and not to fight for their very lives.
And, let it be known that there are consequences for women and girls when they are unable to fight for their bodies and voices, yes, among many things they get breast cancer. So, you don’t get to run away when things get tough as a sister especially knowing that many women who are poor and vulnerable will bear the larger blunt of you’re leaving.
Yet, I must say it kills me that one man can make one organization with thousands of women cry and limp away scared of not being funded by people who do not believe women should control their bodies . . . that one man could have such power over fates of many women. Not on my watch as a sister and not on your watch as a sister organization will you ever decide again to leave your sister organization, Planned Parenthood for our very lives as women and girls are at stake.