For 30 years, Susan G. Komen for the Cure has been helping women find, fight and, when possible, beat breast cancer. Toward those ends, it has contributed some $1.5 billion to support education, screening and treatment programs and advanced medical research.
Until very recently, the Komen organization has used the bounty of its prodigious fund-raising acumen to focus on improving the health of women and protecting them from needless suffering from breast cancer.
On Tuesday, however, Komen confirmed that its local chapters no longer may fund breast cancer screening and education programs offered in their communities by local affiliates of Planned Parenthood. The move eliminates about $700,000 worth of services provided each year in 19 Planned Parenthood regions. Komen did not fund any such services in St. Louis. Wednesday afternoon some affiliates were announcing that they had been granted expemtions from the new policy.
This profound mistake undermines the group's credibility and contradicts its mission. Its board should review and reverse the decision before women in these areas suffer needlessly from breast cancer that screening and education programs could have caught early.
A Komen spokeswoman told the Associated Press on Tuesday that a new policy "barring grants to organizations that are under investigation by local, state or federal authorities" required cutting off support for Planned Parenthood programs.
That might ring true if Planned Parenthood were under investigation by local, state or federal law enforcement or regulatory agencies. But the Komen spokeswoman referred, instead, to a U.S. House committee inquiry being led by Republican Cliff Stearns of Florida, which might more aptly be described as a political and ideological crusade driven by anti-abortion passions.
Planned Parenthood operations long have been a target of anti-abortion groups and like-minded public officials because about 3 percent of the services it provides annually to some 11 million people involve pregnancy counseling and legal abortions. More than 95 percent of its services are related to cancer screenings, contraception, prevention counseling and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases and other reproductive health issues.
Of course, private special-interest groups are free to advocate theircauses as passionately as they choose within the law. But that should have no bearing on Komen's pursuit of advancing the cause of women's health, a mission closely aligned with the screening, prevention, education and treatment work of Planned Parenthood.
Until recently, the Komen organization has acknowledged as much, while carefully avoiding the ideological battleground of abortion. In a 2010 statement explaining Komen's relationship with Planned Parenthood, Komen's chief scientific adviser, Dr. Eric Winer, explained that local affiliates regularly audit Planned Parenthood chapters to ensure that Komen grants are spent solely on breast cancer screening and education programs, as the terms of the grants require. "In some areas," Dr. Winer noted, "the only place that poor, uninsured or under-insured women can receive these services are through programs run by Planned Parenthood."
Komen's sudden shift puts it on a slippery slope. After nearly 10 years of supporting it financially, will Komen now denounce research into the possible roles of adult and embryonic stem cells in breast cancer progression and treatment? Will Komen withdraw its research-based policy statement, posted on its website as of Wednesday afternoon, that abortions do not increase the risk of breast cancer?
Breast cancer cells do not care about the income streams, social standing, political beliefs, ideological credos or geographic locations of the people whose tissues they attack or the people who care for them. Neither should Komen.
