Susan G. Komen for the Cure is the country’s best-known and best-funded breast cancer organization. Known for it’s iconic pink ribbon and annual Race for the Cure event, the organization has invested nearly $2 billion in cancer education and research since its founding in 1982. But today, bowing to political pressure, Komen for the Cure announced that it is severing its partnership with Planned Parenthood and will stop providing hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants that allow their centers to perform breast exams on women who could not otherwise get them.
Time was when I used to think highly of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. After all, they’re pioneers and leaders in the war against breast cancer. They’re all about women’s health and about making certain that preventative health care is available to ALL women, regardless of race, creed, or economic class. Their mission was the health and well-being of women, and politics wasn’t part of the equation.
Well, that was then….
Now, I’d submit that the time has come for those who truly care about the health of the women in their lives…and women in general…to direct their money elsewhere, because Komen has been co-opted by those whose agenda has more to do with hewing to an aggressively Right-wing agenda than finding a cure for breast cancer. Komen has become less a charity with a laudable mission than a smokescreen for those more concerned with enforcing a Far Right view of women and women’s health than attending to their mission.
It’s time to boycott Susan G. Komen for the Cure and send your money elsewhere. It’s not as if there aren’t a lot of other effective, politically neutral non-profits doing good things on behalf of women’s health.
Komen’s pretext for ending the alliance is the spurious congressional investigation into Planned Parenthood led by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL). Democrats say the far-reaching investigation is a political witch hunt and abuse of government resources.
Komen’s new Senior Vice President of Public Policy, Karen Handel, not only has a long anti-choice history, but pledged to eliminate grants for Planned Parenthood to provide breast and cervical cancer screenings when she ran for governor of Georgia in 2010.
Perhaps it’s just that Komen became so big and such a large target that those who hate women and their freedom to seek health care independent of men decided that taking Komen down would be a feather in their cap.
Mission accomplished…and those of us who care about the health and well-being of the women in our lives have largely remained mute while the termites burrowed into the house and destroyed it from within. Komen has abandoned women out of political expedience and moral cowardice. And here all this time I’d been thinking that Komen was about women’s health and the fight against breast cancer….
Patrick Hurd, the CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Virginia, told the Associated Press, “It sounds almost trite … but cancer doesn’t care if you’re pro-choice, anti-choice, progressive, conservative. Victims of cancer could care less about people’s politics.”
By caving to the demands of the Far Right, Komen has revealed itself and its self-assumed mission to be a sham. Caring about the health of women means doing the right thing by and for women. It doesn’t mean caving into the fear and ignorance of those for whom the issue of women’s health barely registers. When one of your senior managers opposes Planned Parenthood, which among other things, provides preventative and reproductive health care to women who might not otherwise receive it, I find myself having to wonder how anyone can continue to take Komen seriously.
Komen’s new policy of not donating to any organization under local, state, or federal investigation means that any politician with an ax to grind can announce that they’ll be investigating a non-profit. Guilty or not, Komen will then use that investigation as a pretext to cut off funding, no matter how worthwhile, laudable, and effective their mission may be. The new policy is nothing but a smokescreen for allowing Conservative senior managers at Komen to be able to make the organization reflect their ideology and prejudice.
As you might imagine, Conservatives by and large were thrilled by the news of Komen cutting ties with Planned Parenthood. Of course, for Conservatives, it seems far more about politics than the health of women, thought they will couch their concerns with buzzwords that make it sounds as if they actually care about women.
There are plenty of other groups who work hard to support providing health care to women and the war against breast cancer. There are plenty of other groups working hard and diligently towards achieving their mission. And, yes, there are plenty of other groups who pursue their mission while displaying focus and moral courage. They don’t cave to ignorance. They don’t cave to hatred of women. And, most importantly, they aren’t caving to those who care more for their narrow Right-wing agenda than the health and well-being of women.
I’d like to suggest that the money you may have been considering donating to Komen be directed elsewhere. I can’t continue supporting a charity more concerned with politics than the health of women. Pink for me is now the color of hypocrisy, capitulation, and moral cowardice.
If you want to make a difference, and I hope you will, please direct your donations somewhere- anywhere- besides Komen. There are no lack of options, and you can start your search here.
