I’m sure you’ve heard of the Susan G. Komen Foundation. They’re the folks who have done an amazing job getting various organizations, institutions, and businesses, not to mention churches, to sign on to their “race for the cure” for breast cancer. It’s one of those feel good things that people support without thinking twice. Well, maybe you should, according to LifeNews:
New figures directly from the Komen for the Cure foundation show 18 affiliates of the breast cancer charity gave a total of more than $569,000 to the Planned Parenthood abortion business in 2010.
The donations will certainly prompt the continued boycott of the Komen breast cancer group by millions of pro-life Americans who find it disingenuous that the women’s organization would partner with an abortion business when abortions are linked to an increase in breast cancer and when Planned Parenthood has been proven to mislead the public by falsely claiming it performs mammograms.
The new figures come from an American Life League study of Susan G. Komen affiliates’ federal forms 990 and they show 18 Komen affiliates gave $569,159 to Planned Parenthood in 2010, the latest year for which figures are available. That’s down from the $731,303 Komen officials publicly confirmed in October 2010, when they acknowledged that 20 of the 122 Komen affiliates gave to Planned Parenthood during the 2009 fiscal year.
Komen affiliates in Austin, Texas; Central New Mexico; El Paso, Texas; Greater Amarillo, Texas; Los Angeles County, California; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Salt Lake City, Utah stopped giving to the abortion business while affiliates in Dallas County, Texas; Denver, Colorado; North Carolina Triad; North Carolina Triangle; and Puget Sound, Washington all began new relationships with Planned Parenthood.
What possible justification could there be for a foundation that raises money for breast cancer research to give some of it to Planned Parenthood, which doesn’t do such research and whose business is built on a procedure that has known links to breast cancer? Rita Diller of the American Life League explains the problem:
“In the first place, Planned Parenthood is not licensed to do anything beyond Level 1 breast examinations – the same exam that can be done by a woman in her shower, or in any clinic or physician’s office. They do not perform mammograms,” Diller explained. “Add to that the fact that Planned Parenthood’s two big money-makers, abortion and contraceptives, are directly linked to breast cancer by numerous studies conducted from the 1960′s through the present.”
“It makes no sense whatsoever for Komen to give money to Planned Parenthood,” Diller said. “Komen’s claim that women in some areas would not be able to receive breast cancer care without giving grants to Planned Parenthood is horribly misleading, at best, since Planned Parenthood does not provide breast cancer care – only manual exams and referrals. ”
Diller said she is also disappointed that the list of Komen affiliates giving money to Planned Parenthood includes several highly-populated urban areas where numerous alternatives to Planned Parenthood are readily available.
“To say that there is no other alternative in such areas for women to receive breast cancer screening and care is preposterous,” she said.
Evidently this has been going on for several years now, but I’d never heard it before. Needless to say, the Komen Foundation will get no more support from me until they sever their ties to one of the most anti-women organizations on the planet.
September 7, 2011 at 12:53 pm
http://ww5.komen.org/Content.aspx?id=16162
September 7, 2011 at 12:56 pm
Or you could ask your local affiliate to account for their spending.
September 7, 2011 at 2:19 pm
Nope, I don’t buy it. Two reasons: 1) Planned Parenthood doesn’t provide breast cancer screenings that are any more comprehensive than what a woman can do in her own shower. For anything more, they have to refer. And the “health education” they do provides information that anyone can obtain by using a computer in a public library for a half an hour. 2) Money, as the old saying goes, is fungible. Every dollar that Komen gives to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer stuff releases a dollar that can go into the abortion business.
The fact that Planned Parenthood may do some commendable things does not mitigate in any way the enormous evil that is the heart of what it is. I have no doubt whatsoever that if the people at Komen’s affiliates were so inclined, they could easily find women’s health organizations in the areas where they are currently supporting PP that would not come with its moral baggage. When they do so, we can talk.
October 11, 2011 at 10:09 pm
“What possible justification could there be for a foundation that raises money for breast cancer research to give some of it to Planned Parenthood, which doesn’t do such research and whose business is built on a procedure that has known links to breast cancer?”
Your citation here links to a Dr. Gerard M. Nadal’s blog. The subtitle of his site is “Science in Service of the Pro-Life Movement” (which is tantamount to a neon sign shrieking “I LOVE ME SOME CONFIRMATION BIAS”), and he has no citations to speak of following his post (and there should be plenty, given his vitriol towards the “pro-abortion” National Cancer Institute, the Melbye study, the paper written by Dr. Brinton, etc.).
The American Cancer Society’s website, on the other hand, bears the subtitle “Saving lives by helping people stay well, get well, find cures, & fight back” (since all of us risk getting cancer regardless of whether we are “pro-life” or “pro-choice”), and their page dedicated to the topic (http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/BreastCancer/MoreInformation/is-abortion-linked-to-breast-cancer) has a number of citations.
You and Dr. Nadal are completely entitled to your religious convictions, and I’m sure that both of you will live the rest of your lives quite happily without ever having abortions yourselves. That said: when the two of you face off with the scientific community a la Eddie Izzard’s right-wing British government facing off with the rest of Europe (“No! No! No! I can’t — la la la la la la”) without backing up your claims, it undermines your arguments. Just saying.
October 12, 2011 at 6:35 am
So, are you contending that the Komen foundation does not, in fact, give money to Planned Parenthood? Or that it doesn’t matter if they do? If you are going to criticise for not backing up claims, it would help if your own argument was clear.
October 12, 2011 at 12:53 pm
Matt: That Nadal has a bias is unquestionable. That others working in the field do as well is also unquestionable. There are lots of medical researchers whose ideological predispositions would incline them to overlook or minimize evidence that would point to a conclusion they would find uncomfortable. The ACS is not immune from this, either. I will admit that my choice of words was somewhat inaccurate. I should have said, “whose business is built on a procedure that has possible links to breast cancer,” given that there are still lots of questions regarding the research and actual causality.
I should also note that you seem to think that Nadal is objecting on the basis of religious convictions alone. In fact, his biography states:
Are his scientific understanding and faith intertwined? It certainly sounds like it. In that regard, he is really no different from others in his field, who come with their own religious or non-religious convictions which influence them, however subtly.
Finally, I have to second Kate in noting that what you say, however valid, says nothing about the substance of the post, which has to do with contributions from the Komen Foundation to an organization that does not do breast cancer research or mammograms. I question their judgment in doing so, and will happily support breast cancer research fund-raising that does not involve a portion of it going to an extraneous purpose.
October 15, 2011 at 5:05 pm
Kate Sanderson says:
“So, are you contending that the Komen foundation does not, in fact, give money to Planned Parenthood? Or that it doesn’t matter if they do? If you are going to criticise for not backing up claims, it would help if your own argument was clear.”
Nope, I didn’t say either of those at any point. To paraphrase my last paragraph:
David is perfectly free not to donate money to the Komen Foundation OR Planned Parenthood because of his own personal religious convictions regarding abortion. When he claims that there is a “known link” between abortions and breast cancer, and his only citation is an admitted pro-life scientist/medical practitioner’s personal blog (while the American Cancer Society and National Cancer Institute, among others, have multiple citations debunking this information), he undermines his argument against supporting the Komen Foundation.
David Fischler says:
“That Nadal has a bias is unquestionable. That others working in the field do as well is also unquestionable. There are lots of medical researchers whose ideological predispositions would incline them to overlook or minimize evidence that would point to a conclusion they would find uncomfortable. The ACS is not immune from this, either.”
Agreed. The American Cancer Society (among others), however, is biased towards fighting and curing cancer; if there was a clearly demonstrated link between abortion and breast cancer, it would be in their best interests to shout it from the rooftops. I did indeed read the biography on Dr. Nadal’s blog before posting. Given that he is biased towards criminalizing abortion rather than fighting and curing cancer, it stands to reason that he will look for information supporting this abortion/breast cancer link and ignore or attack information that doesn’t.