Komen Foundation Has Abandoned Its Principles For Its New Political Ideology

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few days, you already know about the mess the Susan G. Komen For The Cure Foundation has created for itself. The Komen Foundation was created to raise funds to fight breast cancer -- a laudable goal since breast cancer claims the lives of far too many women in this country. And to further that goal, they have in the past been giving a grant to Planned Parenthood. Now they have cut off all Funding for Planned Parenthood.

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.

Like many others, I am shocked by this obviously political power-play by the Komen Foundation. My own mother was a victim of breast cancer and had a double-mastectomy. In the past, I have supported the Komen Foundation because I believed their goal was worthy. I now have serious doubts about the organization, and I will no longer support their efforts. I still think the fight against breast cancer is a very worthy fight and I hope it can soon be won. But the Komen Foundation is far from the only organization waging that fight. For those of you who agree, here is a website of organizations involved in this effort, and most or all of them try to avoid the politics now being engaged in by the Komen Foundation.

There are also a lot of corporate entities that support the Komen Foundation. They need to be encouraged to change that support to a non-partisan breast cancer group. This can be done by writing to these companies and by boycotting their products until they do so. They can be easily identified, because they all have a pick ribbon on their products. I urge you to do this. Cancer prevention, treatment, and cure is too important to be the plaything of any political ideology.

(Graphic above is from the excellent blog What Would Jack Do?)