February 3, 2012 6:47 AM

Susan G. Komen for the Cure: Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind

(thanks to David Flanders for the graphic)

Planned Parenthood has seen a spike in private donations since the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation cut off funding earlier this week. In the 24 hours since Komen announced its decision, Planned Parenthood has gotten $650,000 in donations, nearly enough to offset the losses from Komen’s funding. The group raised $250,000 from its newly launched Breast Health Emergency Fund, which it created to make sure affiliates would still be funded even after the Komen decision—and it raised an additional $400,000 from 6,000 online donors as of Wednesday night. Meanwhile, health-care advocates said Thursday that they believed Komen could lose up to half of its funding from donors who are angry about its decision.

I’m guessing that Komen senior management figured that any anger over defunding Planned Parenthood would be minimal, easily manageable, and would blow over quickly. I’m also guessing that they’re stunned and dismayed by the backlash they’re facing over their politically-motivated decision. Since its inception, Komen has been masterful at focusing attention on its stated mission: fighting the war against breast cancer. It’s made alliances with the NFL, Major League Baseball, and all manner of other organizations in the continuing effort to raise money for research, diagnosis, and treatment of women with breast cancer. Until now, it’s been able to do all of this free of political taint. No one really cared, if they thought about it at all, about Komen’s political orientation. Komen appeared to have no political orientation, because the only thing that mattered was the cause. That was then….

Now, with one exceedingly poor and politically motivated decision, Komen’s management may well have killed the goose that laid their golden egg. As a very wise basketball coach once told me, “One screw-up will cancel out 20 ‘attaboys’.”

Women’s health should be as apolitical as Komen portrays it as being. But in America, at the moment, it doesn’t seem to be.

Komen says that its decision had to do with rules about groups under investigation; but the investigation in question originated with Planned Parenthood’s bitter opponents in Congress. (For background on the hostility, see Jill Lepore’s piece on the history of Planned Parenthood.) And Planned Parenthood says that Komen avoided its attempts to discuss the issue. Now, many people—largely, but not only, women—are angry at Komen, whose mistake may have been believing that it could live in a world without controversy if it only moved in certain circles.

Pink, the color that once symbolized the fight against breast cancer, is now that color of betrayal, partisanship, and public relations suicide….

That’s why I’m calling for a boycott of Komen. I’ve emailed a number of friends, contacts, and blogging buddies around the country. I’ve asked them to spread the word that it’s time to shrink Komen to the point where it can be drowned in a bathtub (apologies to Grover Norquist for the disturbing imagery). It’s time for our money to be put to better use elsewhere.

Planned Parenthood never misused the funds they received from the Komen Foundation. Since 2005, they have used those funds to do 170,000 breast exams and over 6,400 mammogram referrals — undoubtably saving the lives of many women who could not afford to go elsewhere and pay for those exams and mammograms.

But the Komen Foundation has found something they think is more important than saving the lives of poor women by the early detection of breast cancer — their new right-wing ideology. After hiring Karen Handel, a right-wing anti-choice activist from Georgia, the Komen Foundation decided that they would no longer fund the breast cancer screenings done by Planned Parenthood. Although they are now trying to deny it, the once non-partisan cancer foundation has put themselves squarely in the political arena and decided that denying cancer screenings to poor women is the politically-correct thing to do.

As mi compadre Ted McLaughlin points out, there are also a large number of corporate interests who donate to Komen. If even a few of them can be convinced to send their money elsewhere, it would have a huge (and deleterious) impact on Komen. Women’s health care and the fight against breast cancer is too important to be left to an organization more concerned with hewing to Right-wing ideology than their declared mission.

The good news is that Planned Parenthood will be fine; in fact, they’ll likely come out of this in far better shape financially. They’ve received more than enough money to cover the loss of any funds from Komen. So Komen gets to faithfully follow their new ideological path, and Planned Parenthood is pulling in money hand over fist (New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has pledged $250,000). Women will continue to receive the same care from PP that they did when Komen funded them, but now Komen can and should deservedly be relegated to irrelevancy.

Komen also appears to be undergoing its own internal backlash, with many top officials resigning in protest and local affiliates working hard to distance themselves from the national organization. It appears that the damage done may never be undone, though Komen founder Nancy Brinker is furiously attempting to spin the decision to defund Planned Parenthood as apolitical and a simple matter of a change in policy:

Brinker’s been trying to spin reaction to defunding Planned Parenthood as “very, very favorable.”. If you define “very, very favorable” as being “overwhelming and undeniably negative, then Brinker has a point. Unfortunately, she’s a lousy liar.

Komen’s facing increasing pressure to reverse the decision to defund Planned Parenthood. Surely, the organization’s senior management is even now trying to figure out how to minimize the self-inflicted damage, but at this point I suspect (and hope) that it’s too late. Once you reveal yourself to be more concerned with ideology than women’s health, you deserve to be defunded yourself…and so it should be with Komen.

Brinker had to know that hiring Karen Handel as Vice-President could lead to nothing good. An avowed Right-wing ideologue who ran for Governor of Georgia in 2010 on an anti-Planned Parenthood platform, it was only a matter of time before she attempted to remake Komen to fit her prejudice. Brinker may claim (with dubious credibility) that Handel’s hiring had nothing to do with the decision to defund Planned Parenthood, but the coincidence, if that’s even what it is, is simply too much to ignore.

The reality is that this bell can’t be unrung. Despite Brinker’s furious spinning, the reality is what it is. Komen made a decision for political and ideological reasons, and it’s become distressingly clear that the organization, which once did some wonderful things, has lost its way. When Stephen Colbert can call you out and make fun of what’s become impossible to ignore, you have to know you’ve jumped the shark:

Anybody who knows me knows I am a huge supporter of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, which raises millions of dollars a year in the fight against breast cancer … So I’m giving a big Tip of my Hat to the Komen foundation for spending almost a million dollars a year in donor funds to sue these other groups. If they don’t own the phrase “for the Cure,” then people might donate money thinking it’s going to an organization dedicated to curing cancer, when instead it’s wasted on organizations dedicated to curing cancer.

It’s time to boycott Komen. It’s time to let Nancy Brinker and Karen Handel know that they don’t get to put ideology over women’s health care. They don’t get to play politics with the war against breast cancer. It’s time we begin working to convince our friends and loved ones that it’s time to send their charitable donations elsewhere. We should no longer continue funding a corrupt, ideological organization more concerned with litigation and ideological conformity than the lives, health, and well-being about women. It’s time to cut off Komen’s money supply and starve it to death.

You can do your part by going to Charity Navigator. There, you can do your own research and determine where your money can do the most good. It’s time that our money goes anywhere but to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on February 3, 2012 6:47 AM.

Damn...and I wanted to use this name for my band.... was the previous entry in this blog.

Susan G. Komen for the Cure: This is what happens when you fix what isn't broken is the next entry in this blog.

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