A small crowd assembled in San Diego this week to protest new medical guidelines on pap smears and mammograms.
Between 10 and 15 people met on Tuesday on a downtown street corner outside the offices of Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, rallying around a crude slogan.
"The slogan Keep Your Mitts off Our Tits? We're mad," said Linda Dorr, a Laguna Beach resident. "We don't want women dying of breast cancer. "
The protest came in the wake of a pair of health advisories that were recently issued. New guidelines by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said that most women in their 20s can have a Pap smear every two years instead of annually to catch slow-growing cervical cancer. A separate advisory spurred a debate over whether women should begin having regular mammograms in their 50s instead of in their 40s.
"I'm a breast cancer survivor," Dorr said. "I had a bilateral mastectomy this summer. I had Stage Zero, but the fact is, I don't trust what the government's going to do .... with reduced mammograms ... there will be 10-20 percent more breast cancer deaths. But the funny thing is: Mr. President, Senator Boxer, Senator Feinstein: You're not going to be the 10-20 percent. You've identified yourself as the crown-privilege class, and we're not standing for it. American mothers are mad."
Dorr said she came down to San Diego to be a part of the protest because several of the organizers decided to have the rally in San Diego at the senator's local offices.
