It was a tough news cycle for women this week, in more ways than one.
Everyone is still buzzing about the Susan G. Komen Foundation's decision to revoke breast cancer screening grants it had promised Planned Parenthood.
Then we buzzed more as we watched Komen spokespeople fumble through official statements about why they did it. We all sighed and shook our heads in disbelief when we eventually learned that they would reinstate the grants.
What a public relations nightmare.
I stayed up hours past my bedtime the day the news broke to watch an absolute social media war wage on both the Komen and Planned Parenthood Facebook pages. Pro-life activists claimed victory over pro-choice activists. Pro-choice activists accused pro-lifers of only caring about life long enough to make sure a person is born.
I'm glad Komen reinstated the grants. But the way this whole predicament developed and was eventually resolved is a mess. Regardless of where a person stood on this issue, everyone can agree that the whole situation created a lot of ugliness and hatred on both sides. And it completely dominated everyone's attention.
Planned Parenthood most definitely got the good end of the deal. Not only did they have their grant reinstated, they also seemed to be the big winner in the media and in the minds of the public, who donated something in the neighborhood of $3 million to the organization in just three days. This is according to estimates from Planned Parenthood's president.
Komen, on the other hand, alienated a lot of pro-choice supporters with their initial announcement about parting ways with Planned Parenthood. To make it worse, they then alienated their pro-life supporters after reinstating their partnership with Planned Parenthood.
One decision made by a few people in a board room ended up dictating what a whole week's worth of news stories would be about. What's even scarier is that Komen's decision was mainly a front page story because the policy effected two very high profile organizations.
Try to think of all of the other things that happened this week. Does anything else even ring a bell?
CNN ran a story about a woman in Afghanistan who was beaten by her husband and mother-in-law and then eventually strangled to death. The reason? The woman had given birth to yet another girl, her third, and her husband was tired of waiting on a male heir.
Want to hear about another story?
Buried down in the depths of the Health page on MSNBC.com was a story about an FDA recall for one million defective packages of oral contraceptives manufactured by Pfizer. Turns out that the pills could be switched around in the packaging, leading women to take the wrong pill on the wrong day, which of course could lead to an unintended pregnancy.
The news about Komen and Planned Parenthood deserved attention and I am in no way minimizing the weightiness of the Komen/Planned Parenthood issue. In fact, I am emotionally and politically invested in my support of Planned Parenthood and am very glad Planned Parenthood is getting some positive publicity as a result of all of this.
But it is also important to point out to everyone that all day, every day, you can find stories about women fighting for fairness, just like you did this week when women with breast cancer were in the news. There are daily news stories about women who are beaten, killed, abused or even misled about the effectiveness of their birth control pills.
It is important to remember that if you helped fight the fight for women's rights this week, it is just as important to fight the fight everyday.
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Sally Turkovich Wright lives in Pittsburgh with her husband, Jason and German Shepherd, Zeus. By day she works as an eyewear stylist for an independent eye doctor. By night, she writes a twice-weekly column for twoday magazine. Catch up with her on twodaymag.com.
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It seems the war for women’s rights will never end, as each of these stories you mentioned illustrates the struggle women have every day just to be women.
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Let’s start with two housekeeping matters. You should look up the difference between “effect” and “affect.” It’s an important one. Also, I’m going to assume you spelled “catastrophe” with a “k” for alliterative purposes. That’s an odd choice if you did, and a catastrophic misspelling if you didn’t.
With respect to the substance of your article, your point—which you didn’t make until the end of the article—is insulting and foolish. You feel the need to remind your readers that there are important stories concerning women other than the Komen story. Do you truly believe that anyone thinks this is was the only important story concerning women this week? It’s like when self-righteous know-it-alls criticize people for reading about the Kardashians when children starve in Uganda. The media must cover all types of stories, and this story—concerning Planned Parenthood’s funding stream, which has been under direct assault at the federal and state level in the past year—happens to be topical and critical to the lives and health of women domestically and internationally. I understand your desire to find a new take on a news story that everyone and her mother is writing about, but your attempt to Affect the discourse was inEffective.
Best,
Powerwalker
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There are struggles women fight everyday. Sally was using the Komen example as a way to shed light on lesser-talked about (but just as important) topics concerning women. It was a very insightful piece.