Planned Parenthood

So those not living under rocks, or with no access to the fury that is Twitter, may have missed the announcement that Susan G. Komen for the Cure will no longer be funding Planned Parenthood affliates. Planned Parenthood, among other things, provides low cost or free breast cancer screenings to low-income women and also teaches women how to do self-breast exams.

The best summary of this was on Twitter, from somebody called Chris Csont (@cscont), who said "Simplify the headline and the problem becomes clear: Foundation organized to find cure for cancer ends funding for cancer screenings."

Yeah.

You know, I could say a lot about this. I could give a righteous rant about how freaking difficult it can be to get into a women's health clinic of any kind to begin with when you're working full time because of hours and scheduling and health insurance issues. I could point out that abortions form only a small small part of Planned Parenthood's services, and that some Planned Parenthood clinics don't even offer abortion services (yes really), and that the ones that do are the ones working hardest to ensure that low income women have access to IUDs, Depo-Provera, NuvaRing, the pill, diaphragms and so on -- you know, the very items that help prevent abortion. I could once again give my own story of how Planned Parenthood helped me out when I was single and very celibate, but really having major problems with menstrual periods -- so bad, I'd been warned by my boss that I could lose a job I loved. My pathetic health insurance at the time did not cover birth control services. Planned Parenthood did, and got me on Norplant. Job, saved. Health, improved. I count this as a good thing.

But I'm tired. I'm tired of all of this, of having to make the same arguments over and over again. So instead I'll just suggest that we stop spending money on things with pink ribbons on them.

And the Hollow Space Inside

And now finally one of those little pieces of good publishing news that I was mentioning can be told: February's issue of Clarkesworld Magazine just came out, and with it, my story, And the Hollow Space Inside. If you'd prefer to listen to it, a podcast, read by Kate Baker, is also available, and you can purchase copies of the issue or subscribe to Clarkesworld through Weightless Books (my recommendation) or Amazon.com (possibly more convenient). The issue is also for sale at Bn.com for the Nook. The issue also features lovely work by Xia Jia, translated by Ken Liu in his ongoing attempt to take over the speculative fiction world (check out his stories in the archives; no, really, check out his stories in the archives), and Helena Bell.

And now that that's all out...I've found my fingers lingering over the keyboard, trying to figure out what to say about this story, since it's one I feel kinda nervous about, and finally deciding to just let it speak for itself.

Though on a general note, I'm noticing a trend with my pure science fiction stories, like this one: they tend to contain a lot more details stolen from my life, even as the pure fantasy stories tend to reflect the reality of what's going on in my life, with the notable exceptions of Colors, which was written in fifteen minutes of fury and is one of the most personal stories I've ever published, and Pogo Stick. I'm not sure what this says about me as a writer or my approach to either genre.