Strike back against Susan G. Komen's shameful decision
Yael T. AbouhalkahHow can you send a message to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure over its shameful decision to halt its partnership with Planned Parenthood?
For starters, don’t participate in the 5k races that Komen puts on across the nation, raising millions of dollars each year. I’m a runner who’s previously participated in the Kansas City Komen runs, and that’s my boycott decision right now.
Won’t that hurt the good work done by the Komen organization? Yes.
But people who once helped Komen can send their money to other groups that are more interested in helping women with breast cancer than Komen appears to be.
That’s because Komen’s decision re: Planned Parenthood hurts women by cutting off one of the groups that has provided breast cancer screenings to them over many years.
It will be interesting to find out why Komen officials bowed to pressure to get out of their commitment to help fund Planned Parenthood. The proffered reason about how the group doesn’t want to help finance another organization under investigation doesn’t pass the smell test.
(UPDATED 12:50 PM: And here’s a link to one of many stories now making the point that Komen hired a pro-life person, Karen Handel, as a vice president in 2011. She’s decidedly anti-Planned Parenthood.)
But whatever the real reason, Susan G Komen For the Cure has badly damaged its reputation with the people who have been its strongest supporters: women with breast cancer and women who want to support efforts to battle the disease.
(UPDATED NOON: A reader just pointed out an interesting reason that he doesn’t like the Komen organization. Here’s a link to the story about how it sues other groups over using the word “cure” in race titles.)
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Michael Johnson
3 months, 2 weeks agoPerhaps the people at the Susan B. Komen Foundation felt it was contradictory to conduct a foundation based on improving women’s health aligned with an organization that along with other health services, provides abortion as a means of contraception. Don’t simply accept the premise that all abortion is good, Yael. When not medically necessary, the best answer to an unplanned pregnancy isn’t to kill the baby, which is where most people’s objections to abortion on demand happen to be. If you choose to exercise your right not to support Susan B. Komen, that is your right to do so, but it comes off as hypocritical to exercise that right while scolding Komen for doing the same thing.
Mark Hastert
3 months, 2 weeks agoIt seems contrary to the Komen mission to stop funding breast exams for poor women. You’d think that and concerns could be mitigated with restrictions on the use of their money. This does sound more political than practical.
Chuck Close
3 months, 2 weeks agoYael walks a very thin line here, IMO. While I respect his obvious right to boycott on a personal level, I find it a cynical and repugnant act to villify the foundation that has done and continues to do yeomans labor for an oviously worthwhile cause.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with the decision the foundation made, one can fairly say that it is a worthy, just foundation which is unarguably doing excellent work.
You folks at the Star have been bullhorn vocal supporters of PP for years, always dismissive of….frequently contemptuous of those who guard the “funding purity” that they are expected to maintain yet blatantly abuse.
Yael, why not simply call for organizational transparency for PP. That would quickly and easily put an end to the politicising….from all sides.
As long as PP continues to re-route taxpayer dollars to fund abortions against both the will of the people and the rule of the law your ice will remain too thin to support your skating……
…..and in this case your position seems petty and counterproductive.
Ken Whisler
Parkville
3 months, 2 weeks agoYael, the work of the foundation towards it’s desired outcome is huge, and the amount that they were giving to Planned Parenthood is but a drop in the bucket when compared to the whole. The effect that the foundation’s decision will have on low income women being able to get breast cancer screenings is both minuscule and brief. It is hardly even a blip on the radar. There are PLENTY of other places where women of low income can receive breast cancer screenings.
Mark Robertson
3 months, 2 weeks agoYael, you might want to read the numerous studies that show an abortion-breast cancer link.(The ABC Link-Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer) There have been around 72 epidemiological studies of the abortion- breast cancer link since 1957. 80% of them have shown that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer, independent of the effect of delaying the birth of the first child. The delaying of the birth of a first child is a known breast cancer risk, thus abortion contributes to the breast cancer epidemic by causing a countless number of women to delay their first full term pregnancy. And the World Health Organization acknowledges that oral contraceptives containing estrogen and progestin are level 1 carcinogens.(Press release #167 7-29-05) I presented evidence of the abortion-breast cancer link to the Star’s writer who wrote its lengthly breast cancer series which did not mention the abortion- breast cancer link. He essentially laughed it off. Not surprising. Facts get in the way of agenda.
I don’t know the whole story about their motive, but it seems that the Susan Komen bunch should be praised.
Mark Robertson
3 months, 2 weeks agoWith its millions of abortions over the years, and its dispensing of oral birth contol, it is actually “Planned Parenthood” that contributes to the breast cancer and other cancers epidemic. Thank you. Mark Robertson Independence
Roger Feeley
3 months, 2 weeks agoMark Robertson,
First, let me commend you for not hiding behind some anonymous user name.
I just did a quick Google search for the link between breast cancer and abortions. I went to cancer.org, assuming that they don’t have an ax to grind one way or the other. What I found was pretty interesting.
Basically, they said that an historical study where you question women after the fact doesn’t work because healthy women are less likely to admit to an abortion than unhealthy ones. They said that the best kind of study also takes the most effort. In a Prospective study, you randomly select a bunch of women, figure out their abortion histories and then follow them.
Here’s the link to what I found:
http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/BreastCancer/MoreInformation/is-abortion-linked-to-breast-cancer
Here is a quote:
“Results from major prospective studies
The largest, and probably the most reliable, study on this topic was done during the 1990s in Denmark, a country with very detailed medical records on all its citizens. In this study, all Danish women born between 1935 and 1978 (a total of 1.5 million women) were linked with the National Registry of Induced Abortions and with the Danish Cancer Registry. All of the information about their abortions and their breast cancer came from registries – it was very complete and was not influenced by recall bias.
After adjusting for known breast cancer risk factors, the researchers found that induced abortion(s) had no overall effect on the risk of breast cancer. The size of this study and the manner in which it was done provide good evidence that induced abortion does not affect a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer.”
Roger
Jeremy Deeken
3 months, 2 weeks agoYael-As a fellow runner, I have avoided the Komen Race-too much of a “pink parade”. This should give you extra motivation to support a local race on the same weekend.
George Hunsucker
Northland
3 months, 2 weeks agoIt is always fun to watch lefties turn on their own……
Cecelia Glacy Baty
3 months, 2 weeks agoYael- As a past supporter of SGK, a runner in their 5K here in KC and elsewhere, and a 4-year breast cancer survivor, it breaks my heart to see them take this turn. I too will be boycotting their events. I’ll be looking to find another recipient for my dollars to fight breast cancer. Cecelia
Mark Robertson
3 months, 2 weeks agoOh No Yael, Komen hired a “pro-life person?” What could they be thinking? And a pro-lifer who is “decidedly anti-Planned Parenthood.” Shocking! That explains it all. Extremists(pro-lifers) have infiltrated the Susan Komen organization. What is this world coming to? And Roger, I guess all of the other studies mean nothing to you? Thank you. Mark Robertson Independence
Phil Cardarella
3 months, 2 weeks agoIf the Komen folks wish to “boycott” Planned Parenthood, then those who are pro-choice should boycott them — and urge others to do so. Folks who actually care about women’s health issues (and are not fixated on fetuses) know that Planned Parenthood is the single most important agency in protecting women’s health.
Hard as it is for me to write these words: Yael is 100% right!
Bob Thaden
3 months, 2 weeks agoHere’s what I did. I went to their website, and it took a little while to find a way to contact them directly. But eventually I found their page on how to report “IMPROPER CONDUCT”. This is what I reported to them as IMPROPER CONDUCT:
The Komen Foundation has dropped support for all the fine work you did in partnership with Planned Parenthood. My wife has gone through breast cancer, surgery, reconstruction. Thank God we have insurance. But if even ONE of those patients that your funding rescued through exam and referral by Planned Parenthood now falls through the cracks and develops serious breast cancer because of your withdrawal of funding, that is the most egregious and shameful form of IMPROPER CONDUCT that the Komen Foundation itself is engaged in!
Rescind your decision to stop cancer prevention with Planned Parenthood. We’d love to support you, but….from now on, our donations go to Planned Parenthood, Relay for Life and the Leukemia Lymphoma Society (my wife’s had lymphoma as well.) And we’ll encouraged others to do the same. Rev. Bob Thaden Miles City, MOntana
P.S. PLEASE: Respond, and try to justify this horrific decision. When I visit patients dying of breast cancer in the hospital because they couldn’t afford screening, I’ll share your answer with them.
I doubt that they will respond, but I wanted to send something to them at national headquarters. Wouldn’t it be great if 1 million people challenged Komen’s own action as IMPROPER CONDUCT!
Here’s their web address: ww5.komen.org/contact.aspx
Richard L Wagner
3 months, 2 weeks agoI commend Komen for thier courageous move. How many people realized till now that thier support of Breast Cancer research was indirectly involved with Planned Parenthood.
Yael says “shamefull”. I say a move towards transparency. Those who wish to donate to Planned Parenthood can now donate directly. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.
Dan Smith
3 months, 2 weeks agoI didn’t realize that the Susan G Komen foundation gave money to Planned Parenthood. Why should anyone demand that my Komen donations be allowed to go to any organization other than Komen? The United Way works that way and I understand that. I spend time giving and not studying recipients, other than UW. Perhaps, I should be more discriminating in my giving. Isn’t it sad that cultural discussions have gotten so far removed from reality.
James Buchanan
3 months, 2 weeks agoYael I’m one of the unfortunates that had to haul the products of unsupervised or un-medically trained people that did abortions, who hauled the dying daughters to the hospitals, to try to save their lives. I thought the front page was appropiate for the news article. I wish they had filled in the questions that were not awnsered about why they did this. In response to some of the others, they are pro life politically, only to the point of birth. After that they can starve, and be killed off as unwanted baggage of society. I didn’t serve in our military to protect baggage, but our men and women. They aren’t throwaways. But human beings. They need our respect and help when necessary.
Matthew Nugent
3 months, 2 weeks agoMy guess is that a lot of people knew that Komen was donating to Planned Parenthood - certainly the information was available on their website and the antiabortion folks have made a fuss about it for the last few years. It’s not farfetched to think that a charity committed to fighting breast cancer would (or should) give money to an organization that performs breast exams. The only people who are shocked by this development are those who either donated to SGK without doing their reasearch, those who think that Planned Parenthood only performs abortions, or those who have never donated to either and are just offering drive-by commentary. In those cases, that’s your ignorance to own.
Mary Steeb
3 months, 2 weeks agoWhy is it that the vast majority on this comment site come from men? Mostly men whom seem to believe they should decide what I do with my body.
Paula Shelton Tiefenthaler
3 months, 2 weeks agoI am outraged that the Komen Foundation is pulling financial support from Planned Parenthood. My donation this year will go to Planned Parenthood NOT Susan B. Komen -How could you????????????
Thomas Patten
3 months, 2 weeks agoThat’s fine that people want to donate to Planned Parenthood like one of the earlier posters. But when money is raised under the guise of helping cure Breast Cancer and it is redirected to other causes, that is the real outrage. People always have the option of donating their money to specific causes, so the real outrage is that people will plan to boycott this organization. I do find some people’s “outrage” at the decision rather hypocritical. And the more shameful part is that people will seek to encourage other people to boycott a charitable organization because their pet projects aren’t supported. As I stated before, if you want to support Planned Parenthood, give to them. But don’t pretend you’re taking a high road on principles by organizing a boycott of such an organization.
Yanwen Xia
Overland Park
3 months, 2 weeks agoI must say it is a sad day for all women, especially the unprivileged ones. I used to support Komen’s cause, believing its pure and lofty motive, void of any political agenda. Not only I will stop doing so, I will spread the word, too.
Ray Cyst
3 months, 2 weeks agoMurdering babies born or unborn is wrong. Kudos to to the Komen Foundation.
Frank Balsinger
3 months, 2 weeks agoFor Mark Robinson and others who cite Abortion/Breast Cancer regarding the spurious claim that abortion increases the incidence of breast cancer, please, if you love truth, do your homework before propagating disinformation that is injurious to women’s health as a whole. I encourage you to look at the following page from the American Cancer Society as it not only cites numerous studies showing no connection but also explains how earlier studies erroneously arrived at the false conclusion through poor research design and bias:
http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/BreastCancer/MoreInformation/is-abortion-linked-to-breast-cancer
Also, please consider the following from David Grimes, former chief of the Abortion Surveillance Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the subject of the Abortion/Breast Cancer “study”:
He called the study’s methodology “one of the worst” he had seen. He stated that it was “grossly inadequate to attempt to gather detailed personal histories about women’s reproductive lives by telephone,” adding that the study was not designed to study the relationship between abortion and cancer.
“In studies of this type,” he said, “the persistent under-reporting of prior abortions among healthy controls (social desirability bias) produces a spurious relationship between abortion and later breast cancer.” Hence, studies that “rely on only self-reports of abortion (as opposed to medical records) are not credible.” - Source, Media Matters
Jill Corral-Blossom
3 months, 2 weeks agoPP provides breast exams, pelvic exams, birth control (pills, iuds, condoms, etc), HIV testing and STD testing. Do you know that HPV can cause cancer? PP provides these services for those of us who can’t afford healthcare. I am so thankful they were there for me when I really needed them. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have known I was pregnant. I was having a lot of problems and it was due to the fact that it was a high risk pregnancy. If not for PP my daughter and I might not be here. I hope that many people will withdraw their support of SGK and send it to PP and/or the American Cancer Society.
Mark Robertson
3 months, 2 weeks agoDo you not know that condoms don’t stop the HPV? Thank you. Mark Robertson Independence
Jill Corral-Blossom
3 months, 2 weeks agoDo you not know that there are now vaccines that may prevent a woman from getting HPV?
AND…Most HPV infections in young females are temporary and have little long-term significance. Seventy percent of infections are gone in 1 year and ninety percent in 2 years. However, when the infection persists — in 5% to 10% of infected women — there is HIGH RISK of developing precancerous lesions of the cervix, which can progress to invasive cervical cancer. This process usually takes 10–15 years, providing many opportunities for detection and treatment of the pre-cancerous lesion. Progression to invasive cancer can be almost always prevented when standard prevention strategies are applied, but the lesions still cause considerable burden necessitating preventive surgeries, which do in many cases involve loss of fertility.
Since it may take 10 or more years for it to go full blown cancer, that makes pre-screening extremely important. BTW, I never said condoms prevent HPV, ALTHOUGH it does prevent the spread of many other STD’s.
Mark Robertson
3 months, 2 weeks agoDoes Planned Parenthood provide those vaccines? So if not for Planned Parenthood you would not have been able to find out that you were pregnant? Have you ever heard of doctors or pregnancy test kits? Thank you. Mark Robertson Independence
Mark Robertson
3 months, 2 weeks agoFrank B. (quite a picture) Media Matters? Right. Dr. Louise Brinton, of The National Cancer Institute’s Epidemiology Branch, chaired a workshop in 2003 that determinded that abortion was not related to breast cancer. After a number of years of seeing substantial evidence to the contrary, she has changed her view. She now says that that there is a 40 percent increase in the chance of getting breast cancer for those women under 40 who get an abortion. (Top Scientist Finally Admits Abortion- Breast Cancer Link, by Jill Stanek Matters of Life and Death, World Net Daily, 1-13-2010 and National Cancer Institute Researcher Admits Abortion-Breast Cancer Link, Lifesite News, 1-7-10) Thank you. Mark Robertson Independence
Mark Robertson
3 months, 2 weeks agoMary Steeb, I have been at 2 out of the last 3 Marches for Life in Washington D.C. Of the 300 thousand plus people there, it looked like well over half were women, and likley over two thirds of those were young women. Thank you. Mark Robertson Independence
Mark Robertson
3 months, 2 weeks agoAnd HPV vaccine is far from foolproof. (HPV Vaccine Policy: At Odds With Evidence Based Medicine, by Roxanne Nelson, Anals of Medicine, 12-22-11) I’ve got a novel idea, how about young people not participate in sexual promiscuity.(activity) I know, I know, it’s not realistic. Just like driving a car. Young people are going to speed and drive recklessly so they must wear seat belts and have air bags. Right? Thank you. Mark Robertson Independence
Steve Alleman
Kansas City
3 months, 2 weeks agoWorld Net Daily and Lifesite News are not reputable news sources, Mark Robertson. And “Anals” of Medicine? Ha.
Pappy Jeanneret
3 months, 1 week agoThe right to choose to end a pregnancy = ProChoice
The right to choose who your foundation donates money to = ProChoice
The right to choose which foundation you donate to = ProChoice
I support all of these choices. I guess I’m a real ProChoice man. From all the articles and comments I’ve read here and elsewhere I get the impression that a vast majority of “ProChoice” folks are really Anti -Choice.
Steve Alleman
Kansas City
3 months, 1 week agoNewsbusters is not a reputable news source. 100 percent of what?
Fredric L. Rice
3 months, 1 week agoIt is absolutely amazing that a massively beneficial charity organization that saves women’s lives every day was able to be infiltrated, subverted, and destroyed from within by right wing Christianic theofascist extremists who hate everything our country stands for.
THIS is why Americans should register to vote so we can eliminate the theocracy-driven fascists from positions of power over our country, both in government and in the private sector.
http://www.SkepticTank.Org/
JR Beillenhouser
3 months, 1 week agoYeah Fredric, people who hate everything our country stands for. Like abortions for all.
Because no one can have a different viewpoint than you, right? If they do and believe that life does begin at conception, and that so called “blob of tissue” has to be human (what else could it be?) then they should be called right wing Christianic theofascist extremists.
What a pinhead.