After seven years of sitting out Susan G. Komen for The Cure events, pro-lifers can finally get back in the Race! Yesterday, America’s biggest breast cancer charity made it official: the organization is severing ties with Planned Parenthood. The decision ends a multi-million dollar partnership between two nonprofit powerhouses, stunning abortion activists and elating most everyone else. It had been an unlikely alliance from the beginning--with one group setting out to save lives, and Planned Parenthood dedicated to ending them. Since 2005, the Foundation had justified the relationship by insisting that the money only funded breast cancer screening, education, and health programs. Then the news broke. Planned Parenthood didn’t need the money for mammograms, because it never provided them! The clinics only offer manual breast exams, which the National Institutes of Health (NIH) warns is an ineffective form of cancer screening.
Under Komen’s new policy, the Foundation will only award grants to organizations that actually do mammograms. That seems reasonable to everyone but the Left, which has spent the last 24 hours unleashing the fury on the Komen Foundation for “politicizing” the issue--when in reality, the Foundation is just trying to protect its resources. As the charity points out, Planned Parenthood is currently under investigation for misusing taxpayer funds. And unlike most in Congress, Susan G. Komen wants to be good stewards of your money. In just the last few years, Planned Parenthood has racked up a record of fraud, Medicaid overbilling, criminal cover-ups, falsifying medical information, violating safety standards, encouraging prostitution and sex trafficking, medical malpractice, accepting racially-motivated donations, and huge profits. Any legitimate organization should back away. (Even wasteful organizations like the federal government!) There are plenty of respectable health clinics out there (1,200, in fact) that would host the screenings without promoting abortion--a procedure that may have more to do with causing breast cancer than curing it.
Not surprisingly, Planned Parenthood and its allies are on the warpath. After all, this isn’t just the loss of millions of dollars but another major public relations defeat as well. Pro-lifers, meanwhile, are tickled pink that Susan G. Komen has changed to an abortion-neutral stance and is fighting to give women the care they deserve. It’s not only a more principled position, but a prudent one. Take a few minutes to write to the Foundation here and thank them for defunding Planned Parenthood!
