The Monday Line: Where on Linda’s Breasts Do You See Political Parties or Religion?

Tip your cap to LindainLasVegas and her YouTube video – “What Breast Cancer is Not” (shown below).  This courageous woman talks for 4+ minutes to camera and shows all of us why this political football needs to stop being tossed around at her and other women’s expense. Cancer takes lives, does not discriminate and has no business taking political positions, hiring ex Presidential Press Secretaries or waging an ongoing cultural war against women.

Your breasts and your reproductive system (and what you decide to do with them) are no one’s business but your own. I’ve watched the rhetoric grow since well before Bush 41 (H.W.). I remember being in Houston two days before the start of the Republican National Convention and going for my morning run from the hotel. My route took me past the old Astrodome where an eight lane boulevard was shut down by pro-life protestors on one side screaming at pro-choice demonstrators on the other side. I was about to turn around and find another route when the cop pulled the barrier aside and said, “hey, just run down the centre of the roadway, you’ll be fine.”

I was physically fine but the emotional battering from the noise and fury on both sides remains to this day. I personally could not make the decision that faces so many and I am grateful I do not ever have to. Even when my oldest son was conceived in 1982 when we were breaking up, my then wife asked me if she should terminate the pregnancy and I would not take a position. “That is not MY decision or choice.” I am grateful my son is now 29 years old and a fine man.

So why is it extremists cannot allow people to make their own choice. I watched the Randall Terry abortion Super Bowl advert causing so much sound and fury before the game and thought, “really, how does this advance your case? Why would these photos change anyone’s mind, in this age of Hollywood CGI imaging and gory video games, who would even believe they were real?”

We’ve got to get away from shock and awe and political wedges and have real discussions like Linda just did with us. A cancer organisation that claims it is pro-life, cannot take away services from a GOP dog-whistle organisation (remember 2008 and Acorn? Who’s helping the poor now?) AND terrorise poor, rural women denying them life-saving screening services.

I was fascinated by the video because no one ever showed where the chemo shunts went or what the result of radical double mastectomy was. Her courage was deeply moving and know you will be moved as well. Yet it was her controlled anger at the idiots making this and Planned Parenthood services a political issue that struck me most deeply.

(Story continues after the video.)

Where on her chest do see political parties or religion? Nowhere! And this is how it should always be. Bravo Linda! Fight on! You now have hundreds of thousands of people fighting mad alongside you. That toughness will help you beat this and serve as an inspiration for millions.

Politicians and the Susan G. Komen Foundation… take women’s uteruses and breasts out of politics and support these brave women. Do not demonise them for taking a choice you and your ‘big swinging Washington, DC dicks’ would ever have to face for yourself!

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Denis G Campbell is author of the book Egypt Unsh@ckled: Using social media to @#:) the System. He is also editor-in-chief of UK Progressive Magazine and contributes politics and business articles for several global newspapers and magazines. He also provides regular commentary for BBC, China Radio International and others.
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