Susan G. Komen (breast cancer charity) pulled $600,000 yr funding from Planned Parenthood and there was a huge uproar.  Today, both organizations report a huge surge in donations and I just think this is trippy.

You?

Ya, it's been all over FB the last two days.  Many are commenting that they will not be donating to Susan G. Komen any longer.

I noticed the surge in funding to Planned Parenthood, but hadn't heard anything positive happening for the Komen foundation.

http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/02/after-cutting-ties-with-planned-parenthood-komen-donations-up-100-percent/

And alicia, what a beautiful picture! :)

Thanks, Elsa. It's really sad how much information is and is not actually given on the news.

Aww, thank you! 

The country is simply polarized on every issue.  My guess is that after all the reports of the surge in donations to PP, the other side kicked in.

Front page, NYTimes, 2 headlines.

It's gotten the two camps donating separately, I see. Wish it hadn't come to something so divisive...breast cancer screenings trump everything, in my book. Sigh.

A large portion of my FB feed is indignant; and I've seen the facebook page, it's like 3-1 against.

Several women in my family have been diagnosed with breast cancer over the years, so that's personal.

They're getting trashed on Guidestar (non profit information database for people who want to research non profits before they give) and it's turned into a giant argument.

Well I read that one of the officials resigned over this

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/top-komen-official-resigned-in-protest-over-planned-parenthood-cuts/?ref=us

I've never been a fan of the Komen foundation because their overhead is extremely high for a charitable organization. They pay out very little in grants.

Komen has also stopped funding embryonic stem cell research, FYI. They used to give 12 million dollars per year to scientists at Johns Hopkins, Yale and the Nat'l Cancer Institute, among other institutions. No longer.

The Susan G. Komen Foundation hired Karen Handel, Georgia's anti-Planned Parenthood Secretary of State, to be its Senior Vice President for Public Policy. Handel is an anti-abortion activist whose election platform was about cutting off Planned Parenthood. And now the Komen Foundation will no longer fund BREAST EXAMS at Planned Parenthood.

CharityWatch gives the Breast Cancer Research Foundation an A+ rating and the National Breast Cancer Coalition Fund an A rating. Neither of those is looking to de-fund Planned Parenthood or to deny women health care in the name of ideology.

The choice to pull out really grinds my gears. I wrote about it on Facebook, but I don't know that my personal opinion matters here, so I'll refrain from being a Leo moon with a Mars in aries.

I think it was a very ignorant decision, especially when you look at the services Planned Parenthood actually provides to the public (and this is coming from someone who is against abortion.)

Times is reporting that Komen will not defund Planned Parenthood after all.

Komen just backtracked so fast you can practically smell the burnt rubber.

Translation:"We really don't like being called out repeatedly over the entire damn Internet & being called on the phone and  called out by Andrea Mitchell. Also some of our corporate partners made some phone calls to Nancy Brinker. We just got trashed on Guidestar. Please, please please stop scrutinizing us and just buy pink plastic crap and have warm vague fuzzy feelings toward us again!"

 Statement from Susan G. Komen Board of Directors and Founder and CEO Nancy G. Brinker

I think it's a crap move on the Komen Foundation's part, honestly.  I mean, it's their money and they can certainly do what they want with it, but Planned Parenthood isn't just about providing women with abortions.  It provides free or low cost women's health care (pregancy prevention, STD screenings and treatment, breast & gynocological exams) to people who would otherwise not have access to such services. 

I grew up an a urban city and can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that if PP wasn't there, there would be exponentially greater #'s of unwanted pregnancies due the resultant reduced availability of condoms and birth control for young and/or poor individuals.  People have sex - it's a fact of life.  Cutting funding reduces women's access to affordable health services such as screenings, contraception, and the like, which hurts *all* of us in the end. 

You see what a sorry ass mess we're already in at present with our health care system the way it is - it allows people to go bankrupt trying to treat and prevent illness.  Getting affordable healthcare care for anything in this country these days is nigh impossible without help from organizations like PP, and for the student or woman busting her ass in a minimum wage job, cutting funding to organizations like this only means more women will simply go without care. 

Again, this is seperate and apart from the abortion issue - what if a woman has a routine "female" complaint - heavy menses, yeast infection, etc. - if organizations like PP weren't around they would have to go to a regular doctor and pay upwards of $100 just to get seen, nevermind the cost of treatment!  PP works on a sliding scale so all women can afford to take care of their healthcare concerns.  They also educate women on things like the importance of monthly self-breast exams, how and when this should be done, they refer to free and low cost mammography  centers for women that may have need - things like this.  I wonder how many women's lives have been saved due this?   

I give the Komen Foundation a big thumbs down for this.  They can absolutely do what they want with their money, but if they are really and truly behind the idea of beating breast cancer this means making sure women get screened and educated. PP does all of this so pulling funding from them is conterproductive to what the Komen Foundation supposedly stands for.  

I expect abortion to always be a polarizing issue. I am pro-choice and feel strongly pro-choice. Yet personally, I cannot conceive of any circumstance in which I would have an abortion. Abortion was not a consideration when I was told my youngest would have trisomy 18. I have dear friends who feel very strongly the other way. And I can understand their viewpoint.  And maybe abortion should always be a strongly debated issue.

But I find it weird how some people are using the abortion issue to deny affordable healthcare and all forms of contraception to women. Then it is no longer an abortion issue, it becomes an issue of  a deeply rooted misogyny. As a woman, I expect there will always be a small group of mean-spirited people trying to destroy Planned Parenthood. It's very existence threatens their view of a male dominated world. But a group dedicated to eradicating breast cancer going along with this misogynistic viewpoint. This is when women got pissed.

This headline is soooooooo Venus in Pisces opp Mars in Virgo.  It's got money, women, charity, anger, and health issues all wrapped up into one big ball.   People are pissed because funding cuts will result in less service (Virgo) to the needy (Pisces). 

I suspect from hereon out (at the very least) people are really going to be scruitinizing how the money they donate to charity is being used. 

On one hand, I feel like the Susan G. Komen group can do what they like with their money, power, and prestige. At the same time, I must remember that not only does great power go hand in hand with great responsibility in my opinion, but when one is also extremely well known in the public spotlight, one should take one's public reputation (that they actively built up themselves) into serious account before making a big decision.

Planned Parenthood is more civic, and socially active in my world, and is more familiar, and accessible to most people I know. Susan G. Komen is more like a coolly impressive queen that sits up in a high tower I can barely see in the clouds, and am not that interested in going to all the trouble to visit with.

I'm pro-choice, and have no personal qualms with abortion. But that's my own view, and decision.

I hate eugenics. :(

Woops the actual link got moved: http://ww5.komen.org/KomenNewsArticle.aspx?id=19327354148

Further in the same statement:

Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has no place in our grant process.  We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities. 

Translation: "We hope you just read the top of the this statement and gone away happy and not caught on the fact we will not be funding Planned Parenthood in the future. Please stop calling us with your haterade."

It is our hope and we believe it is time for everyone involved to pause, slow down and reflect on how grants can most effectively and directly be administered without controversies that hurt the cause of women.  We urge everyone who has participated in this conversation across the country over the last few days to help us move past this issue.  We do not want our mission marred or affected by politics – anyone’s politics.

Translation: "Please, please shut up with the calls and the emails, and the petitions and the twitter."

Starting this afternoon, we will have calls with our network and key supporters to refocus our attention on our mission and get back to doing our work.  We ask for the public’s understanding and patience as we gather our Komen affiliates from around the country to determine how to move forward in the best interests of the women and people we serve. We extend our deepest thanks for the outpouring of support we have received from so many in the past few days and we sincerely hope that these changes will be welcomed by those who have expressed their concern.

Translation: "We will be calling rich and wealthy donors and longtime volunteers to do damage control. Please do not threaten to boycott Bank of America over us. Thank you random people who've never contributed to us before saying that we're right on our facebook page. Suck it, dirty hippies!"

Shakti - did you write those translations?

Judging by her Botox fish pout, something tells me Nancy Goodman Brinker has her own cadre of doctors, has never seen the inside of a Planned Parenthood waiting room.

One may think abortion is a moral wrong.  Or birth control for that matter.  Or, free or low cost abortion services and birth control for the uninsured or low-income.  But it doesn't make any of those things illegal, at least not yet. 

What really freaks me out about this is that one lawmaker, opposed to abortion, opens a political investigation into PP, and the fallout has been predictable and ominous.

We like to shout about our loss of freedoms...but what happened here is shadow government at its most loathsome. 

Lots of people who are outraged have probably not ever donated to PP themselves.

Or, to Komen.

People who do donate should make sure that their donation funds what they want, i.e., research, or breast cancer screening places that are not affiliated with things they don't like.

Planned Parenthood should not depend on anyone else to do their fundraising for them-if they have enough support they don't have to depend on the "whims" of others. Appeal to the outraged people, if that helps.

Why anyone feels that Komen is morally obligated to support Planned Parenthood is a mystery to me.  They can refine their operations as they see fit, no? It's like having a responsility to shareholders, the people who put the money in, as opposed to the masses. They clarify who they want to do business with, and people agree and donate or they don't. 

A FB rant is nothing. Set up recurring donations if it really matters to you.

"Lots of people who are outraged have probably not ever donated to PP themselves."

I thought the same thing.

The bottom line is, some people think abortion should be legal, others do not and there is no middle ground on this issue.

FWIW, I don't think anyone is saying they are obligated to fund PP.  It's that if you're representing yourself as an organization that is dedicated to fighting breast cancer and as part of that mission you support other non-profit organizations that offer free and low cost breast cancer screening and then subsequently withdraw your support over politics, people are going to call BS on you for that.   

Exactly, Elsa. I often get the impression that sometimes pro-choice people (and I am, though basically apathetic) want the satisfaction of snookering pro-life people into financially supporting it, even in a roundabout way.

They don't have to support it financially, no matter if it's legal. That's a fact, so no need to get all indignant.

Alethea, if people want to support breast cancer research, it does not neccessarily follow that it must be funneled to an all-purpose clinic where other procedures they don't agree with are also offered. 

Breast cancer is not abortion. Just because they are women's issues doesn't make them the same.  Komen has the right to disassociate itself from abortion providers if they so choose. 

It is perfectly reasonable that a woman is pro breast cancer research and anti-abortion. 

They can be as political-statement-making as they desire. They are a private foundation.

On the funding of abortion, I personally think we could have a civil war over the issue.   Y'all probably think I'm insane but I mean it. I wonder that is not the goal.

PD, did I not say in my statements (even long before you replied) tha it's their money and they can do what they want with it?  That does not mean I have to agree with what they are doing.

Basically, what is more important: The mission of your organization or the personal politics of that organization's higher-ups??  That's what it boils down to for me.

They are free to withdraw their support at any time for whatever reason they choose.  I am also free to think they are douchebags for putting their political agenda ahead of the supposed mission of the organization.  If you're setting aside the primary goal of your charity due politics when PP is the largest provider of women's healthcare services in the country this hardly seems like a sensible way of fighting breast cancer.   

Let's be clear - Planned Parenthood's breast health exams save lives and many of those lives are women of color, the same women that those who are opposed to reproductive justice profess to give a shit about, even as they cheered Komen's indefensible move.

Indefensible in the face of daunting breast cancer mortality numbers. Indefensible in the face of the reality that PP breast exams filled a gap in the health care system that far too many fell through. And indefensible when I consider the sister who needs someplace to go because she felt something and knows she shouldn't ignore it but doesn't even know where to begin.

For the record I've a monthly donation subscription to to PP.

"FWIW, I don't think anyone is saying they are obligated to fund PP."

Obamacare says you do. At least Komen could opt out LOL.

(Ironically?) today the House vetoed part of it - the Class Act.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/the-problem-with-class-is-that-its-voluntary/

"Obamacare says you do."

Unless you have a wavier.

LOL

Komen does have a responsibility to the women it serves in general - to the degree their mission states. They did not announce that they were now a strictly pro-life foundation dedicated to cancer research and promoting breast cancer awareness.

As a private foundation, they are accountable to their mission as well as their patrons - some of whom spoke out, including Michael Bloomberg and other people who have spent their lives promoting women's health - against how a well-known organization committed to women's health and supporting prevention exams and instilling healthy habits, would place their political agenda above providing services and carrying out their mission. They claim to care about women's health, but why not just stipulate the money for PP to be used for breast exams and other areas they support? After all these years, it's quite an odd move.

If it was a clear decision on Komen's part, I don't see why they didn't announce this after they decided on it at a board meeting. A change of leadership leading to deep organizational change may be justifiable if they are responsible about communicating their changes. Were donors notified?

I looked at this article that satori posted - wow the PP donation would about cover the President of SGK's salary

http://boards.elsaelsa.com/topic/i-will-not-be-pinkwashed