Bizarre, Politics, Society

Race For A [Political] Cure: Komen Cuts Off Funding For Planned Parenthood

Susan G. Komen for the Cure has previously been ridiculed for its bullying of other charities and its lawsuit against any charity using “for the cure” in its name or advertising. Now it is receiving criticism for cutting off funding for Planned Parenthood affiliates and preventive screening services. It is the first time the organization has cut off such funding based on a new rule involving organizations under investigation by Congress.


The House oversight and investigations subcommittee announced in the fall that it would investigate Planned Parenthood’s funding. The organization often becomes a hot button issue during election periods due to the abortion controversy.

Komen has been targeted in a campaign to defund Planned Parenthood. Last year, it hired a vice president who had previously advocated for the group’s defunding in her run for Georgia governor.

Source: Washington Post

168 thoughts on “Race For A [Political] Cure: Komen Cuts Off Funding For Planned Parenthood”

  1. Keep at it, please. Hope it will continue until after the election.
    And then, who knows. Freed women power is awesome—-a word I despise, but appropriate here.

  3. Blouise, Rafflaw, they have been taking political advice for years including taking positions that Congress should not fund studies regarding the possibility that breast cancer has environmental causes. They over-reached this time and it got some publicity. They get a lot of corporate sponsorships and donations, that has (I’m sure) shaped their policies for far longer that the most recent kerfuffle might indicate.

  4. Blouise,
    Susan B. Komen got what they deserved when they took political advice instead of business advice. There is no level low enough that the Right will not surpass.

  5. If they pay Handel enough, she’ll go away. After all there’s plenty of room for her on the “Chicken Dinner Circuit” where she can join Palin and Coulter and really clean up.

  6. Since the above was from the same source as Elaine’s but a different quote I decided to cite it.

  10. Elaine M.1, February 6, 2012 at 11:23 am ~
    …..Komen operations have been under intense scrutiny since last week when a plan to stop giving grants to Planned Parenthood triggered blistering criticism of Komen’s leadership.
    —————————
    mmmmm, is that like an ‘investigation’????

    I’d like to see a pie-chart ….$$$$

    1. Where are the authorities????
      Ducking!!!
      The same as for other war-crimers, WS, etc.
      If they investigate one, then they have to take on the other.
      And it’s election year. Don’t rock the Repub boat.

  11. What Komen spends on Komen
    By Lori Stahl
    2/6/12
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/post/komen-spends-lavishly-on-salaries-and-promotion/2012/02/06/gIQAVw4qtQ_blog.html

    Excerpt:
    DALLAS – Nancy Brinker, founder and chief executive of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, took home $417,000 in salary in 2010, according to financial documents posted on the charity’s Website, and paid 50 top executives more than $100,000 each.

    What the Dallas-based foundation spent on staff and administrative expenses included $20 million for advertising and promotion, $14 million for “office expenses’’ and more than $14 million for consulting and professional services. Another $7 million was spent on contract labor and $3 million for travel. Komen officials did not immediate return calls and emails seeking comment on Monday morning.

    Brinker, who also serves as chairman of Komen’s board of directors, traveled first class on airlines with the explicit permission of the board she chairs.

    The expenses are disclosed in financial reports on the charity’s website. Komen operations have been under intense scrutiny since last week when a plan to stop giving grants to Planned Parenthood triggered blistering criticism of Komen’s leadership.

  13. Komen reversal on Planned Parenthood doesn’t end controversy
    By Liz Szabo and Gary Strauss, USA TODAY
    http://yourlife.usatoday.com/health/story/2012-02-05/Komen-reversal-on-Planned-Parenthood-doesnt-end-controversy/52980132/1

    Excerpt:
    Some cancer survivors and advocates say Susan G. Komen for the Cure will have to work hard to win back supporters, even after the breast cancer organization reversed course on a controversial decision to end grants to Planned Parenthood.

    Although some longtime supporters remain loyal, others said feelings of ill will were created by the controversy won’t be easily erased.

    “There are many men and women who have completely lost their faith in Komen, and they won’t be back in the future,” said breast cancer survivor Lisa Bonchek Adams, of Darien, Conn., who raised nearly $15,000 for Komen shortly after her diagnosis. Earning back that trust could take “a major overhaul,” said Adams, who says Komen needs to become “more transparent” about its goals and how it operates.

  14. In my opinion The Susan G Komen Foundation’s blunder in defunding Planned Parenhood is a good thing because it may prompt donors and potential donors to examine other questionable aspects of the foundation. Just because Komen has reversed its decision is no reason that boycotting former donors should reverse theirs.

    I read multiple articles and some had links to previous pieces criticising Komen.one of them included the following allegations:-

    1/ That Komen is sponsored by large businesses including some in the drug and chemical trades and that their is a risk that the interests of these sponsors affect Komen’s godworks;

    2/ That Komen in return for sponsorship allows businesses to place the Komen pink ribbon on their products but the donations from each sale are a very small proportion of the price and some of these products for example Kentucky Fried Chicken are anything but healthy;

    3/ Komen has a lobbying arm and donors to Komen truly concerned with women’s health would be horrified at the ends for which it lobbies.For example Komen lobbied against a bill for conducting a scientific investigation into whether chemicals in the environment cause cancer.

    In my browsing i followed a link to an article that alledged the precedeing and more. I did not bookmark the article and have not been able to find it again thoughI thought that it was on Talking Points Memo or Alternet. If anyone comes across what might be that article I would appreciate their letting me know. However here is a link to an article at evilslutopia that has some of the same allegations:-

    http://evilslutopia.com/2012/02/susan-g-komen-for-cure-shows-their-true.html

    The following quote on lobbying is particularly interesting:-

    -Komen has engaged in some questionable lobbying efforts

    This current controversy has caused people to take another look at some past criticisms of the way that Komen lobbies for and against certain legislation, including questions about what kind of help Komen believes poor women should get to pay for cancer care, and about whether Komen really supports research into potential environmental causes of breast cancer. Here are a couple of excerpts:

    In 2000, when I first became a breast cancer activist, one of my first assignments was contacting the senators and members of Congress in my area to encourage their support for the Breast & Cervical Cancer Prevention & Treatment Act. The bill was to provide Medicaid coverage for uninsured women diagnosed through the Breast & Cervical Cancer Prevention & Screening Act, which had been passed several years earlier. IOW, the Treatment Act was necessary because uninsured women were getting no-cost breast cancer diagnosis, but still had no means to pay for treatment.

    …Upon calling my GOP senator and speaking with his aide, I was shocked to hear her tell me “Sen.__ can’t sign on as a co-sponsor to the bill because all the breast cancer groups aren’t in agreement on it.” Shocked, I asked her who was opposing it. She told me that Komen opposed the bill. When I asked her why, she explained that Komen felt that treatment for uninsured breast cancer patients should be funded through private donations, like the pink ribbon race. I was speechless, in shock. A phone call to another activist confirmed it was true – Komen was lobbying behind the scenes to kill the bill. A moment later, Sen.__’s aide called me back and begged me not to repeat our conversation to anyone, that she had given me the information by mistake.

    …In 2009, Komen lobbied behind the scenes to weaken the health care bill (ACA) as it was being debated in Congress. They hired Hadassah Lieberman, wife of Joe, in an effort to convince Joementum to vote against the Public Option. Komen spent over $1 million in 2008 & 2009, on behind the scenes lobbying related to the health care reform bill, so who knows what else was on their agenda.

    …They worked for several years to stall or kill the Breast Cancer & Environmental Research Act. In the end, they eviscerated it by removing new funding for environmental research and substituting a panel to review all research on breast cancer & environment. Using private funds, they recently collaborated with the Institute of Medicine to develop said report. Released last December, it sadly detailed the same old arguments that there’s no evidence of links between environmental toxins and that no further research should be done on the subject since everyone has those toxins in their bodies already. Instead they chose to blame breast cancer patients for getting the disease (more here).[Daily Kos]

    …most people would be shocked to find that the Komen Foundation helped block a meaningful Patients Bill of Rights for the women it has purported to serve since the group began in 1982.

    Despite proclaiming herself before a 2001 Congressional panel as a “patient advocate for the past 20 years,” demanding access to the best possible medical care for all breast cancer patients, Federal Election Commission records show the Komen Foundation and its allies lobbied against the consumer-friendly version of the Patients Bill of Rights in 1999, 2000 and 2001. Brinker then trumpeted old friend George W. Bush in August 2001 for backing a “strong” Patients’ Bill of Rights, while most patient advocates felt betrayed. [AlterNet – Read the whole thing. Seriously, go. I’ll wait.]

    However I recommend that those of you who have the timer ead the full evilslutopia article.. The section on pinkwashing is particularly god.

    1. Perhaps the only answer to information flow is:
      Look for the secret money flow. It’s all false.
      Can readily believe they found this to be in “their own” interests.
      Anything big is always rotten at the core and false, false, false.
      We all sell ourselves for money. Some lie about it only.
      A true ideaist is a poor person.

  16. Swarthmore mom1, February 4, 2012 at 10:13 am

    Thanks, anon nurse. They wanted to take down Planned Parenthood like they did ACORN, and they wanted to do it quietly but because of the internet the plan did not work.
    —————–
    nope, they aborted….

  19. Where is our equivalent to FoxNews, to get our messages out?

    It’s not everyday, a goof like Komen’s wakes up some of us.
    How many of the lowest quartile of the 99% got this news; and knew how to make their voices heard?

    The issues and their takeovers are there to fight, as is the net to use, and local Obama campaigh organizations to influence.
    .
    Who’s got the plan?

    Pumping up here is great, but where’s the action?

    This may not be Re-elect Obama: Turley section, but it could become one.

  20. Well AN,

    If the GOP obstruction of Obamas’ Administration is evidence that Partisanship is not destroying this country then, I do not know what is proof…Well, heck they even said this….

    If he (Obama) can’t get through his agenda when the Democrats controlled both houses of congress….then….I think the issues don’t need refining….

    As Mike S and others have said….The only reason to Vote for Obama is the Sct….that is a salient issue…Other than that…I am hoping an Intelligent person runs as a Third party….But the proof already shows that the Intelligent won’t run….Not saying that Obama is not intelligent…but he does not know how to utilize that to the country’s advantage….That is where Bill Clinton differs…

    Its Women’s issues to some and its the effective tax rate to others…So they stand in the sand with the line drawn….Take a look at Grover Cleveland….He was a strict Democrat…..He vetoed more legislation than any other president that I am aware of….then right after than T.R. Roosevelt came to be… He took PRIVATE PROPERTY for PUBLIC USE…..and He was a Republican….that handed the fate of the US to Taft then Wilson…then…oh yeah…..I think we had something called a Great Depression…..damn….History does repeat itself….

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