What color ribbon do cowardly BS-artists wear?

Last year at my new office's Christmas party, we did that "dirty Santa" game and I ended up with a pink fold-up umbrella. You can never have too many fold-up umbrellas, even though I'm not crazy about pink. But it turns out that it wasn't just any pink umbrella... it was a "breast cancer awareness" pink umbrella, complete with a little fuschia ribbon drawn on it.

And my coworkers were all "You got an umbrella! Oh look, it's a BREAST CANCER AWARENESS umbrella!" as if it's extra-good at repelling raindrops. And I was kind of... eh.

Here's something I've never written about because I honestly feel a little dickish saying it, I do: I frakking hate all those pink "breast cancer awareness" products. Pink kitchen utensils, pink shoes, pink purses, entire pink cars. Of course it's a good thing that people are aware of cancer and how to detect it early - particularly breast cancer, which women and their doctors were so squeamish about addressing until very recently. And the Susan G. Komen Foundation has become the most visible symbol of breast cancer awareness-raising. Their funding and, yes, all that pink, has saved lives.

But you know who else saves lives? Planned Parenthood. Every year, PP performs between 700,000 and 800,000 mammograms*, pap smears and other preventative exams on women, most of them low-income. PP serves the exact population who are more likely to die from treatable cancers because they don't get treatment until it's too late, usually because they don't have health insurance coverage.

EDIT: PP doesn't do mammograms themselves, apparently. But they do basic breast exams and offer referrals to doctors who do mammograms.

But because PP also performs abortions and provides other reproductive care for (again, usually low-income women), Komen has announced that it's pulling funding from one of the largest health care providers in this country.

They have every right to do that; it's their money. But the next time you get an appeal for Komen donations that swears that this foundation is the No. 1 advocate for women's health, you'll now know for sure that they're full of it. Komen's leaders proved today that their top concern is politics, not preventing cancer. They're no different than the "pro-life" people who do everything in their power to eliminate funding for those programs that actually prevent unplanned pregnancy.

But, hey, at least now my pinkwash-hating conscience is clear. Your pink spatula did not save a single woman's life today. But Planned Parenthood did.