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Angelina Jolie Receives Preventative Cancer Treatment

May 16, 2013 By 4 Comments

Angelina-Jolie-13Film star Angelina Jolie wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about her decision to receive preventative surgery to decrease her risks of breast and ovarian cancer. Jolie has a high risk of developing both forms of cancer because of her genetics: 87% for breast cancer and 50% for ovarian cancer. Jolie says:

I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much as I could. I made a decision to have a preventative double mastectomy. . . I hope that other women can benefit from my experience . . . and then take action.

I admire Angelina Jolie for her decision. Her risk of developing breast cancer has dropped from 87% to 5%. I think Jolie makes a very important point in the op-ed when she says: “I do not feel any less of a woman. I feel empowered that I made a strong choice that in no way diminishes my femininity.

Film stars like Angelina Jolie are often sexualized by their fan base, as are musicians like Beyonce. Women’s breasts are viewed as a commodity, rather than a part of the body. Jolie did not get a “boob job.” She took preventative measures to protect her health and continue to continue her role as a mother. And yet “fans” have been posting comments on Twitter that show the sexism that is so prevalent in popular culture (and American culture in general).

Jolie is lucky that her partner Brad Pitt has been 100% supportive throughout the surgery process. He has publicly called her a hero. I say thumbs up to Brad.
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Filed Under: Breast Cancer, Pop Culture, Women's Health Tagged With: , , , ,

Pink Ribbon Inc. – The story of how breast cancer become a pink marketable good

April 11, 2012 By 6 Comments

I don’t usually see movies in central London, but this time I decided it was worth the equivalent of $50 for two cinema tickets. The Human Rights Watch Film Festival was in town and my husband and I decided to see at least one movie. We decided on Léa Pool’s Pink Ribbon Inc, which is based on the book by Dr. Samantha King and boy, was that a good idea.

This movie really should have the subtitle: “Here’s more if you’ve sort of stopped being angry at Komen after the Planned Parenthood debacle.” It exposes how the Susuan G. Komen Foundation and the Avon Foundation have hijacked the ribbon from Charlotte Haley  (which was originally more of a salmon color than the bright pink we know today) and turned it into a tool for corporate gains.

To be sure – raising awareness is important and so is community. However, this film peels away the layers of pinkification and the “tyranny of cheerfulness” which now surrounds this brutal disease and touches upon the difficult issues. It talks about the very important stuff which is left unspoken during the runs and races for the cure. Just a few include: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Breast Cancer, Film Reviews Tagged With: , ,

Facing Massive Backlash, Komen Foundation Reverses Itself

February 3, 2012 By 3 Comments

After announcing on Wednesday that it would no longer provide funding to Planned Parenthood affiliates for breast cancer screening and education programs, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation said earlier today that it would revise the policy which led to Planned Parenthood’s defunding.

While the initial rationale for defunding the organization was that it was undergoing a federal investigation, Komen now states that its policy will be amended so that only criminal, rather than political, investigations would disqualify a group from receiving funding. The statement did not address another reason that Komen’s president gave for cutting the funding: that Planned Parenthood referred patients to other providers for mammograms, rather than performing them themselves.

Perhaps this reason wasn’t addressed because it doesn’t make a lot of sense – it’s hardly uncommon for a primary physician to refer a patient to a specialist for further testing. And referring out doesn’t take away from the fact that the patient has been alerted to a potentially serious problem. Just being able to perform the initial exam and educate women about next steps is a vital service, and one that Planned Parenthood is fully capable of providing.

Komen’s initial decision was swiftly met with both outrage and outpourings of support for Planned Parenthood. As the foundation continues its attempts at damage control, Planned Parenthood has released its own thoughts on the matter: “We are enormously grateful that the Komen Foundation has clarified its grantmaking criteria, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Komen partners, leaders and volunteers.”

Filed Under: Women's Health Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Breast Cancer Organization Pulls Funding to Planned Parenthood

February 1, 2012 By 3 Comments

Yesterday, Susan G. Komen for the Cure announced that it would no longer provide funding to Planned Parenthood affiliates for breast cancer screening and education programs. Komen, the world’s largest breast-cancer organization, had been providing grants to local clinics for at least six years; last year, Planned Parenthood affiliates received nearly $700,000 from the group.

Given that Komen’s mission statement includes the promise that “we’re working together to save lives, empower people, ensure quality care for all and energize science to find the cures,” why would the organization cut funding for programs that help so many women receive potentially life-saving care? Komen’s official reason is that it recently adopted guidelines that prohibit funding organizations that are under congressional investigation. Last fall, Rep. Cliff Stern, a Republican from Florida, announced an investigation into Planned Parenthood’s use of federal funds.   [Read more...]

Filed Under: Breast Cancer, Women's Health Tagged With: , , ,

Women’s History Month: Anti-Choice Women

March 10, 2011 By 26 Comments

Charmaine Yoest, Americans United for Life

As we move through Women’s History Month, it is interesting to look at the role that women are playing in the anti-choice movement. While there are a surprisingly large number of candidates to choose from, three women really caught my attention: Charmaine Yoest, president and CEO of Americans United for Life; Marjorie Dannenfelser, president and co-founder of the Susan B. Anthony List (SBA-List); and blogger Jill Stanek.

Americans United for Life is a public interest law and policy organization that works with anti-choice legislators to pass anti-choice laws and defend those laws in court. One of AUL’s stated goals is to help pass legislation that would inform women of the oft-discredited link between abortion and breast cancer.

In contrast, SBA-List has one overriding goal: to end abortion in the US. To that end, the organization works to elect anti-choice women to Congress; train and equip potential anti-choice candidates to run for office; and advocate for the passage of anti-choice legislation in Congress. Recently, the SBA-List fought to keep abortion out of health care reform and vote out anti-choice Democrats that voted in favor of reform. The organization was also was sued by Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-OH) for claiming that Driehaus voted for “taxpayer-funded abortion;” in response, SBA-List filed a motion to dismiss the suit.

Ironically, Dannenfelser was once pro-choice. As an undergraduate at Duke University, she even served as the “pro-choice chair” for the school’s College Republicans. But then Dannenfelser spent a summer interning in Washington, DC, and she shared a house with other Republican interns. Dannenfelser began dating a man who was anti-choice, and as a consequence started to re-evaluate her own views about abortion. But Dannenfelser has also recounted another event that summer that was apparently also instrumental in shaping her political views. After a porn video belonging to a housemate’s friend was destroyed, a “bitter schism” broke out between the house’s libertarians and social conservatives over who should pay for the tape. Dannenfelser, along with the other conservatives, moved out.
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Filed Under: Abortion, History Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Pro-Choice News Roundup

November 12, 2010 By Leave a Comment

We’ve got a mishmash of articles about women’s health for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

The big abortion-mental health lie gets debunked – Washington Post
Calling Bullshit on Breast Cancer Memes – The F Word
Unequivocally Against Female Genital Mutilation – On the Issues

And just in case you missed it on our site last week, here’s a great article about maternal health in Africa.

Don’t forget to join us on Sunday for the Feminists For Choice Tweetup. Details are in the sidebar.

Filed Under: News Roundup Tagged With: , , , , ,

Facts About Breast Cancer: Defining “Awareness”

November 1, 2010 By 5 Comments

Through the course of several blogs posts and a lively discussion here at Feminists For Choice an issue arose about breast cancer prevention and detection. Simply put: what are the guidelines and recommendations for breast cancer detection and prevention?  This doesn’t seem like an issues at all, a simple Google search should suffice to answer the question and the discussion should be moot.

Yet, what a simple Google search reveals is a plethora of websites promoting breast cancer awareness, a variety of “pink” products and plenty of opportunities to donate.  To find actual information on breast cancer the disease a little patience and some knowledge of website navigation is required. Both tools being supplied, what you will find is a variety of facts and figures about breast cancer that may or may not be current (or provide a date at all), and a multitude of contradictory information.  Many of the websites I found provided no source from which the “facts” about the breast cancer disease were acquired or provided vague links to home pages of breast cancer research sites, but did not point specifically to where the information was gathered.
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Filed Under: Breast Cancer, Women's Health Tagged With: , , ,

Breast Cancer: The Most Important of All the Cancers (?)

October 13, 2010 By 15 Comments

It would seem that breast cancer is more important than any other type of cancer.  Though breast cancer was fourth in both number of new cases and deaths in 2010*, its month of awareness trumps all others.  Does anyone even know that Prostate Cancer Awareness month is September? As in last month, the month before October, the month before Breast Cancer Awareness month? It seems one cannot escape Breast Cancer Awareness this month as it is blaring from the television, viral campaigns nearly reach the level of spam, pink ribbons are plastered all over restaurants and retail shops, even professional football players are sporting pink.  The sheer volume of business that jump on the pink band wagon is astronomical.

It was not until writing this article that I was even aware which month (if any) had been assigned to prostate cancer and while the gender stereotypical color blue has been deemed the color of prostate cancer, not many are aware of it.  And certainly the television, professional athletes and local retail establishments were not sporting any sort of Prostate Cancer Awareness paraphernalia last month.  Yet prostate cancer rates are close to, and in some years surpass, breast cancer rates in number of new cases and deaths each year.
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Filed Under: Breast Cancer, Women's Health Tagged With: , , ,

Will We Ever Have a Vaccine for Breast Cancer?

June 8, 2010 By 6 Comments

A recent story in the New York Daily News reports that a recent study shows promising results in the development of a potential breast cancer vaccine.

The research, at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, focused on six mice that were bred to be prone to breast cancer. After receiving the test vaccine, none of the mice developed any cancerous tumors. But when six additional breast-cancer-prone mice received a placebo vaccine, all six got breast cancer.

“If it works in humans the way it works in mice, this will be monumental,” Dr. Vincent Tuohy, who led the research, told Sky News. He said initial tests suggest that the vaccine could not only prevent new cancers from forming but could halt the growth of existing tumors.

While I certainly support breast cancer research, I think that this study is hardly conclusive. First of all, there is the question of sample size. I hardly think that six mice are a statistically significant sample size. If this were an opinion poll, I doubt that anyone would say that six people’s opinions were representative of the community as a whole. The vaccine study would have to be replicated on a much larger scale in order for me to believe that these results show promise.  [Read more...]

Filed Under: Women's Health Tagged With: ,

Do We Need a New Women’s Movement?

December 3, 2009 By 6 Comments

An article in Wednesday’s LA Times really has me pissed off. (I know . . . that’s really not a new emotional state of being for me, but bear with me.) In it, Barbara Ehrenriech (the author of Nickled and Dimed in America) argues that we need a new women’s movement, and that the current generation of feminists is fighting the wrong enemies.

Has feminism been replaced by the pink-ribbon breast cancer cult? When the House passed the Stupak amendment, which would take away abortion rights from women who get any government help purchasing insurance, the female response ranged from muted to inaudible.

Soon after, when the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended that regular screening mammography not start until age 50, all hell broke loose. Sheryl Crowe, Whoopi Goldberg and Olivia Newton-John raised their voices in protest; a few dozen non-boldface women picketed the Department of Health and Human Services. If you didn’t look too closely, it almost seemed as if the women’s health movement of the 1970s and 1980s had returned in full force. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Women's Health Tagged With: , , ,
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