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Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, who has been fighting breast cancer for 16 years (and is in recovery), has mobilized a 48-hour campaign, endorsed by the Blend and BlueNC, to gather 20,000 signatures to take to Senator Kay Hagan’s office on Friday to ask her to support a public health care plan. To the right are the faces of women in my community who are breast cancer survivors.
Millions of people want that option considered, and the stories of uninsured and underinsured women who don’t receive adequate care and die from breast cancer are striking. Eighteen thousand people die in this country each year because they lack insurance. Jane:
So I started thinking — why do I care if there are more women in office if they don’t care about women’s issues? What on earth would be the value of having a woman who saw her primary function in this battle as guarding the profitability of the insurance industry, as opposed to a man like Bernie Sanders whose commitment to a strong public plan has been one of the only firewalls in the Senate against this turning into nothing more than an insurance industry bailout?…Women in Congress who will stand up and say “enough, there is a line I will not cross” are in short supply — even among our friends.
So together with BlueNC and Pam’s House Blend, we reached out to my fellow breast cancer survivors in North Carolina. Women like Hazel and Connie, Juanita and Gail and Patricia and Yvette. Dorrita, Connie, Linda and Lotie. Mary, Pepper, Waddeah and Felicia. Women who have triumphed, women who have fought breast cancer and won. Women of all ages and races and sexual orientations who are not afraid to tell the truth and speak up on behalf of other women.
Because many of our sisters did not survive. Getting early treatment is critical to recovery, and women often put off getting exams if they don’t know how they’re going to pay for them.
Young African American women are twice as likely to die of breast cancer as young white women, and are five times as likely to suffer delays in getting treatment.
Kay Hagan has been the sole obstacle keeping a public plan from coming out of the Senate HELP Committee. On Friday, Pam Spaulding and breast cancer survivors of North Carolina will go to Kay Hagan’s office carrying their signatures and those of the people who stand with them, asking Hagan to stand with us, too. We want to get 20,000 signatures of support for them to deliver in the next 48 hours.
Stand with breast cancer survivors of North Carolina. Please sign the petition.
6 Comments
Signed…Signed it, Pam. I will be permanently leaving NC at the end of the month, so I’ve been grilling Sen. Hagan’s office on this for some time now. To add to the health care debate, new statistics came out last week regarding HIV infection rates in the United States – the Southeast has much higher rates of infection than the rest of the country. One of the reasons why…people don’t know they have the virus because many here are without health insurance. Ergo, they are not getting tested.
In 2009, in the United States of America, that is unacceptable.
Do the signatures need to be NC residents?I’ll sign if it’s nationwide. I’ve had my maternal grandmother and several lesbian friends who diesd from breast cancer. Women who haven’t had children, have a higher risk for breast cancer, and many lesbians are in that catagory. A remarkable lesbian raku artist, (a friend of my lover and I), made beautiful sculptures depicting Angels some with one or both breasts removed, a slash mark was representing the scar across their chest. We lost her in the early 90′s.
no anyone can signHagan sits on the Senate HELP Committee that decides these matters, and her vote on that committee affects all Americans, not just North Carolinians as health care policies are determined.
thanks, and DONE
I sincerelyhope that this and other pressure is successful. We really need voters to put intense pressure on Congress to get this done.
Signed,as an NC resident