After Susan G. Komen Debacle, Senators Launch Women's Rights Campaign

WASHINGTON -- Inspired by the backlash over the brief attempt by Susan G. Komen for the Cure to cut funding for Planned Parenthood, a group of senators Wednesday is launching a bid to organize 1 million people in support of women's rights.

Led by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), seven Democratic senators and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee are appealing to backers on all of their websites to sign on to "One Million Strong For Women" in hopes of harnessing the energy displayed in the backlash against Komen.

"The strong public outcry in response to the Susan G. Komen Foundation's decision to defund Planned Parenthood last week -- which they later reversed -- shows how powerful we can be when we come together," says an email expected to be sent Wednesday by Gillibrand's office and obtained by The Huffington Post.

"Our right-wing opponents continue to launch attack after attack against women's rights, women's health, and women's economic security -- and we've got to fight back every single day," the appeal argues.

The Evil Brilliance of Komen's Karen Handel

This morning, Karen Handel resigned as the vice president of public policy of the Susan G. Komen foundation. Handel had spent the last week at the epicenter of the controversy around Komen’s decision to withdraw support for Planned Parenthood and several progressive groups were circulating petitions to call for her dismissal. Handel’s very public resignation letter shows a political acumen and sophisticated grasp of cultural narrative that seems to have eluded Komen generally and their CEO, Nancy Brinker, through this entire debacle.

Here’s an excerpt from the beautifully crafted letter:

What was a thoughtful and thoroughly reviewed decision—one that would have indeed enabled Komen to deliver even greater community impact—has unfortunately been turned into something about politics.This is entirely untrue. This development should sadden us all greatly.

Handel, with an expert turn of word, moves to recast the characters in this ongoing saga that is helping to set the stage for a showdown over women’s choice in the 2012 election.

Handel is well-documented as a leader in pushing for Komen defunding of Planned Parenthood. According to internal e-mails obtained by the Huffington Post, Handel was constantly hyping the threat of a right-wing backlash against the breast cancer foundation for their grant to Planned Parenthood, even though—at best—those threats were sporadic and low level. The Komen funding to Planned Parenthood was restricted and could be used only for breast cancer screening in the clinics. Since most women who can afford to do that screening at their private doctor’s office do, this policy by definition disproportionately affects low-income and young women.

Karen Handel, Susan G. Komen's Anti-Abortion VP, Drove Decision To Defund Planned Parenthood

WASHINGTON -- Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the nation's leading anti-breast-cancer charity, has insisted that its since-reversed decision to pull funding from Planned Parenthood arose from a routine change in criteria for grant eligibility that had nothing to do with abortion politics.

But a Komen insider told HuffPost on Sunday that Karen Handel, Komen's staunchly anti-abortion vice president for public policy, was the main force behind the decision to defund Planned Parenthood and the attempt to make that decision look nonpolitical.

"Karen Handel was the prime instigator of this effort, and she herself personally came up with investigation criteria," the source, who requested anonymity for professional reasons, told HuffPost. "She said, 'If we just say it's about investigations, we can defund Planned Parenthood and no one can blame us for being political.'"

Emails between Komen leadership on the day the Planned Parenthood decision was announced, which were reviewed by HuffPost under the condition they not be published, confirm the source's description of Handel's sole "authority" in crafting and implementing the Planned Parenthood policy.

Rick Santorum Opines On Susan G. Komen Foundation's Planned Parenthood Decision

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum sounded off on the Susan G. Komen for the Cure decision to cut off funds to Planned Parenthood for breast exams, which it reversed in part Friday.

"I don't believe breast cancer research is advanced by funding an organization that does abortions where you've seen ties to cancer and abortions," said a hoarse Santorum on "Fox News Sunday." In fact, a 2007 study published by the Archives of Internal Medicine studying 105,716 women found no link between breast cancer and abortions. Abortion services account for about three percent of Planned Parenthood's activities, while cancer screening and prevention accounts for 16 percent.

"So I don't think it's a particularly healthy way of contributing money to further the cause of breast cancer, but that's for private organizations like Susan G. Komen to make that decision," continued Santorum.

The Huffington Post's Laura Bassett noted that Komen apologized, repeated that it would continue to fund existing grants and make Planned Parenthood eligible for future grants. Komen did not, however, promise to renew Planned Parenthood grants.

Santorum also criticized a recent Obama administration rule requiring religiously affiliated employers -- but not churches and other places of worship -- to provide contraception under their health plans without charge.

"This is the problem when government tells you that they can give you things. They can take it away, but even worse they can tell you how you're going to exercise this new right that they've given you consistent with their values instead of the values guaranteed in our Constitution," he said.

The former Pennsylvania senator finished last in Saturday's caucuses in Nevada.

Original Article
Source: Huff 
Author: Luke Johnson 

Komen's Ambiguous Apology

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation must have been totally unprepared for the firestorm provoked by its announcement that it was severing its long relationship with Planned Parenthood, which for at least five years had been receiving grants to provide low-income women with breast exams and mammogram referrals. Komen showed itself to be both dishonest and ridiculous: there was its initial long silence over the decision, followed by a flurry of flimsy and inconsistent explanations—first it was that Planned Parenthood was being investigated by Representative Cliff Stearns; then it was a change in criteria for funding. And what PR genius advised it to childishly delete negative comments on its Facebook page? Result: Planned Parenthood was deluged with donations to keep its breast care services going, including a $250,000 matching grant from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; twenty-two senators signed a critical statement; there were resignations among staffers and open rebellion among volunteers. Andrea Mitchell’s interview with Nancy Brinker on MSNBC was as close to open distaste as that very polite journalist ever gets. Mitchell is herself a breast cancer survivor, and the expression on her face as she questioned Brinker was as if she were steeling herself to pick up a dead mouse.

The massive show of prochoice strength worked. Friday morning Komen released a statement apologizing for its decision and acknowledging the unfairness of cutting off PP because of the Stearns investigation: “We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.” (Forget for the moment that Brinker denied the investigation had anything to do with the ban on PP). This is excellent news: Komen has in essence admitted that the Stearns probe is politically motivated, which must sting recently hired senior VP for public policy Karen Handel, who publicly favored defunding PP when she ran as a Palin-endorsed candidate in the 2010 Republican gubernatorial primary.

Komen’s Choice

In 1731, Benjamin Franklin’s nineteen-year-old sister, Jane, wrote to her brother that their sister Mary, a mother of three, was dying of breast cancer. Franklin was in Philadelphia; his sisters were in Boston. “I know a cancer in the breast is often thought incurable,” Franklin wrote Jane, “yet we have here in town a kind of shell made of some wood, cut at a proper time, by some man of great skill (as they say,) which has done wonders in that disease among us, being worn for some time on the breast.” Mary died later that year. There was no cure. There is still no cure.

On Tuesday, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the breast-cancer fund-raiser and sponsor of an annual pink-ribbon Race for the Cure, announced that it would no longer support Planned Parenthood. In 2011, Planned Parenthood received six hundred and eighty thousand dollars from Komen to administer breast-cancer screenings at its clinics.

Komen has been pressured to cut ties with Planned Parenthood for years. This week, it named as the catalyst for its action a congressional investigation into Planned Parenthood launched in September by Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican. But Stearns’s inquiry, as I reported in the magazine in November, is only one feature of a much broader effort to defund Planned Parenthood. A year ago, that campaign nearly led to a shutdown of the federal government.

The people who have urged Komen to stop supporting Planned Parenthood aren’t opposed to breast-cancer screenings; they’re opposed to other services Planned Parenthood provides, which include contraception and abortion. But a campaign to sever the ties between a foundation that’s raising money to find a cure for breast cancer and a health-care provider that advocates for reproductive rights exposes more than a division over contraception and abortion. It exposes a gruesome truth about politics in this country.

Susan G. Komen Top Officials Resign As Backlash Gains Steam

Dr. Kathy Plesser, a Manhattan radiologist on the medical advisory board of Susan G. Komen for the Cure's New York chapter, said she plans to resign from her position unless Komen reverses its decision to pull grant money from Planned Parenthood.

"I’m a physician and my interest is women’s health, and I am disturbed by Komen’s decision because I am a very strong advocate for serving under-served women," Plesser told The Huffington Post. "Eliminating this funding will mean there’s no place for these women to go. Where are these women to go to have a mammography? Do they not deserve to have mammography?"

With her decision, Plesser joins Komen's top public health official, Mollie Williams, and the executive director of Komen's Los Angeles County chapter, Deb Anthony, both of whom also resigned in protest.

Susan G. Komen, the nation's largest breast cancer charity, announced on Tuesday that it had adopted a new rule against partnering with organizations that are under investigation, and that it would therefore sever ties with Planned Parenthood, which is currently under investigation in Congress. The groups that prompted that investigation are anti-abortion advocacy organizations that have long criticized Planned Parenthood, primarily a women's health and family planning organization, over the fact that some of its clinics offer abortions.

Nancy Brinker, the CEO of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, appeared on MSNBC on Thursday afternoon to deny that Komen's decision to end grants to Planned Parenthood had anything to do with politics.

"I'm troubled that it's been labeled as political," Brinker told host Andrea Mitchell. "This is not a political decision."

In the appearance, Brinker gave a revised set of reasons for why they are stopping the grants for breast cancer screenings. Komen initially claimed that it was ending the grant because a congressional investigation of Planned Parenthood launched by an anti-abortion lawmaker triggered a new internal rule against funding any program that is under investigation by federal, state, or local government. Now Brinker says the decision was less about the investigation and more about Komen's revised grant standards.

"Our issue is grant excellence. They do pass-through grants with their screening grants, they send people to other facilities," Brinker said. "We want to do more direct service grants." She made a similar claim in a call with reporters later on Wednesday, arguing that the grants have been terminated because Planned Parenthood doesn't generally provide mammograms directly.

Komen's $7.5 Million Grant to Penn State Appears to Violate New Policy

Susan G. Komen for the Cure, which recently announced that it is ending grants to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screening because of a controversial investigation launched by an anti-abortion Republican congressman, currently funds cancer research at the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center to the tune of $7.5 million. Like Planned Parenthood, Penn State is currently the subject of a federal government investigation, and like the Planned Parenthood grant, the Penn State grant appears to violate a new internal rule at Komen that bans grants to organizations that are under investigation by federal, state, or local governments. But so far, only the Planned Parenthood grants appear to have been cancelled.

An internal Komen memo written by President Elizabeth Thompson and obtained by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic states that if "an applicant or its affiliates" is under investigation "for financial or administrative improprieties by local, state or federal authorities," then "the applicant will be ineligible to receive a grant." Penn State, the Pennsylvania university that the Hershey center is affiliated with, is currently under investigation by the federal government over the sexual assault scandal involving former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, who has been indicted on multiple counts of sexual abuse of children. In 2008, the Komen foundation awarded a five-year, $7.5 million grant to the Hershey center to study treatments that could reduce the risk of breast cancer.

Under the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, university officials are required to "issue a timely warning if a reported crime represents a threat to the campus community." The Department of Education announced that it was investigating Penn State over possible Clery Act violations last November, and a Penn State spokesperson told Mother Jones that the investigation is ongoing. The Komen foundation has not yet responded to a request for comment.

Komen's founder, Nancy Brinker, is a former Bush administration official who has given almost $200,000 to Republican officials over the years, and Karen Handel, Komen's top lobbyist, is a pro-life Republican who was elected secretary of state in Georgia. Komen officials have insisted that Brinker and Handel's right-leaning politics weren't a factor in the decision to cut off funding, but Goldberg reported that the new grant standards were written as a pretext for denying funds to Planned Parenthood, and that the decision was "driven" by Handel.

Brinker, appearing on MSNBC Thursday afternoon, denied the decision had anything to do with politics.  "I'm troubled that it's been labeled as political. This is not a political decision," Brinker said.

Original Article
Source: mother jones 
Author: Adam Serwer 

The Komen Foundation Pinkwashes Anti-choicers, Punks Planned Parenthood

Remember when anti-choicers got LifeWay Christian Resources to pull its pink-covered Here’s Hope Breast Cancer Bibles from Walmart and other stores because one dollar of every sale went to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation? The antis were upset that the wealthy and influential breast-cancer charity made grants to Planned Parenthood for breast exams and mammograms for low-income women. And remember when Bishop Leonard Blair of Toledo, Ohio, told his flock to stop raising money for Komen because someday in the future it might endorse stem cell research? Crazy, right?

The anti-choice movement can be so clumsy, and so weird, we forget that it is also smart and strategic and busy busy busy. Because while you were shaking your head over pink Bibles and stem-cell futurology, Komen was hiring Karen Handel as senior vice president for public policy. Handel is not your typical philanthropy administrator. She is a Republican pol, a former Georgia secretary of state, who ran in the 2010 gubernatorial primary, with endorsements from Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney and anti-immigrant finger-pointing Arizona Governor Jan Brewer. At that time she described herself as “staunchly and unequivocally pro-life,” opposed to stem cell research and a fan of crisis pregnancy centers—places that have repeatedly been shown to use scare tactics and misinformation to dissuade women from seeking abortions. She vowed to eliminate from the state budget pass-through grants to Planned Parenthood for breast and cervical cancer screenings. Interestingly, she had previously supported these grants, using the exact arguments defenders of Komen’s PP grants are making now: PP is the only organization capable of doing the work—reaching low-income women, for whom the PP clinic is often the only medical care the get—and the grant money does not fund abortions. Handel’s turnaround shows you how quickly the anti-choicers have claimed formerly neutral turf: in only a few years a relationship deemed normal and good—in Georgia!—and the only existing way of providing needed services was branded with the mark of the beast.

Komen Kills Grants for Planned Parenthood Breast Cancer Screenings

Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the ubiquitous charity dedicated to fighting breast cancer, is cancelling hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of grants to Planned Parenthood that help pay for cancer screenings, the Associated Press reported on Tuesday.

Komen has been under pressure from anti-abortion groups to drop its funding for Planned Parenthood, which received $680,000 from the anti-cancer group in 2011. Most recently, abortion foes forced a Christian publisher to stop printing pink Komen bibles and pressured bookstores to take them off shelves. Groups have also called on supporters to boycott Komen entirely, and decried the group as a "lie from the pit of Hell." But Komen says the anti-abortion groups' activism didn't play a role in its decision, which it claims is the result of a new internal policy forbidding it from funding any organization that's currently under investigation in Congress. (Planned Parenthood is the target of a congressional investigation, but that probe is led by an anti-abortion lawmaker who has sought to end all federal support to the group.)

One thing the AP piece misses, however, is that pressure to end the Planned Parenthood funding may have also come from within Komen itself. Karen Handel was named senior vice president at Komen in April 2011, and is now "leading the organization's federal and state advocacy efforts." But before joining Komen, she was a candidate in the Republican gubernatorial primary in Georgia, and was critical of Planned Parenthood. "[S]ince I am pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood," she wrote in a blog post, and pledged to eliminate all state funds for breast and cervical cancer screening to the group if she were elected governor.

Handel was criticized during the campaign for a vote she made as a county commissioner to provide grant money to Planned Parenthood for cancer screenings. The issue was a contentious one in the Republican primary, with Handel responding to that criticism by attacking her opponent for voting to fund Planned Parenthood in the state legislature.

That's not to say that Handel is definitely behind Komen's decision to drop funding to Planned Parenthood; I have no idea what role she may have played, if any, and Komen didn't immediately respond to a phone call and email seeking comment.

The anti-abortion groups' campaign to force Komen to cut its funding for Planned Parenthood has been going on for several years, but this is the first time Komen has caved on the issue. Planned Parenthood issued a statement on Tuesday afternoon noting that it is "alarmed and saddened" that Komen had "succumbed to political pressure" in ending the grants, which have paid for 170,000 clinical breast and 6,400 mammogram referrals since the groups began their partnership in 2005.

Original Article
Source: mother jones 
Author: Kate Sheppard