Susan g. Komen for the Cure has long been under pressure

Susan g. Komen for the Cure has long been under pressure:  By Karen Kaplan, Shari Roan and Eryn Brown, Los Angeles Times

February 3, 2012, 6:00 p.m.

As a boyhood women's bloom activist, Eve Sanchez Silver was appreciative of her plan with Susan G. Komen for the Cure. The alignment had about alone angry breast blight acquaintance into a civic cause, with its blush ribbons actualization on tote bags, containers of yogurt and even NFL football fields.

But in 2004, she abstruse that some of the group's bounded capacity gave money to Planned Parenthood affiliates to pay for breast exams for low-income women. Silver couldn't advice activity that the added money Planned Parenthood had, the added abortions its clinics could perform.

By the end of the year, she had accommodated from Komen's Hispanic-Latino Advisory Committee and begin a new mission: burden Komen to cut all banking ties to Planned Parenthood.

"You cannot be a life-affirming alignment in alliance with an alignment that kills people," Silver said.

So began a slow-growing abysm amid two pillars of women's bloom that culminated in a absolute aperture this anniversary if it became accepted that Komen had absitively to stop allotment about $650,000 in breast-health casework at 16 Planned Parenthood affiliates. On Friday, in the face of cutting accessible pressure, Komen antipodal itself.

But it may accept appear too backward to cull the admirable breast blight alignment out of the polarizing civic agitation about abortion.

Komen architect and arch controlling Nancy Brinker insisted Friday that the foundation's new rules preventing grants to groups that were accountable to government investigations had not been advised to ambition Planned Parenthood and had annihilation to do with its role as an aborticide provider. "We do not wish our mission bedridden or afflicted by backroom — anyone's politics," Brinker said in a statement.

By then, a key administrator at its Dallas address had resigned, and others in the group's bounded affiliates had threatened to chase clothing if the accommodation was not reversed. Associates of Congress admonished the foundation for arena backroom with women's health. Irate women denounced Komen on the Internet and apprenticed to abstain its accessible "Race for the Cure" events, which accession several actor dollars anniversary year.

The bearings has been a "total embarrassment" for Komen, said Tom Madden, arch controlling of TransMedia Group, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based accessible relations and crisis administration company. "I can't accept an alignment like Komen wasn't acquainted of what was traveling on."

There had been aboriginal signs that Komen admiral accomplished their new attitude against Planned Parenthood could aftereffect in a accessible backlash.

The address fabricated no advertisement of its accommodation backward endure year to change its allotment rules. It relied on its bounded affiliates to acquaint the Planned Parenthood capacity they adjourned that its grant-making belief had changed.

Over the endure few weeks, admiral at Planned Parenthood's New York City address accustomed chat from assorted affiliates that their Komen grants would not be renewed. At that point, Cecile Richards, admiral of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, approved a affair with Komen admiral but was rebuffed, said backer Shawn Rhea.

Instead, Komen issued a account that it would no best accord money to organizations that were beneath government investigation. As a result, Komen said Planned Parenthood was no best acceptable to accept funds because it was the accountable of an analysis launched by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) to actuate whether the clinics had acclimated accessible money to armamentarium abortions, which is banned by law. Such an analysis is not a academic aldermanic investigation.

Supporters of Planned Parenthood — including dozens of associates of Congress — cried foul. In a letter to colleagues, Rep.Michael M. Honda(D-San Jose) alleged the Stearns analysis a "sham investigation" that was "politically motivated.... The actuality that the Komen Foundation is application this analysis as the base for its accommodation is distressing."

In fact, though, aborticide opponents had been putting the clasp on Komen for years. Silver's plan at an antiabortion accumulation alleged the International Coalition of Color for Life in Red Bank, N.J., and with agreeing activists was paying off.

Each year, the foundation's bounded affiliates sponsor added than 100 fundraising runs and walks about the country. In the weeks arch up to those events, some affiliates accept calls from antiabortion groups aggressive to abstain the contest and to stop acquaintance the businesses that sponsor them, said John Hammarley, a above chief communications adviser at Komen who was laid off endure year during a reorganization. (He says he harbors no ill will against Komen.)

Part of Hammarley's job was allowance bounded affiliates accord with the flare-ups. "The affair of Komen's captivation with Planned Parenthood was the individual advancing affair that acquired some controversy," he said. "It was an irritation: How abounding calls accept we gotten this month? How abounding humans are upset?"

Churches and schools with antiabortion behavior aswell fabricated a point of boycotting Race for the Cure events, abhorrent acceptance from basic teams, Silver said.

Eventually a baby accumulation of Komen staffers including Hammarley began discussing a action for managing the Planned Parenthood issue, allegory a amount of options including awkward all grants to Planned Parenthood, advancement the cachet quo or something in between, he said. After assessing how these alternatives could affect Komen and its affiliates, they recommended blockage the advance to abstain a backlash.

Komen Foundation reverses the decision of financing of Planned Parenthood

Komen Foundation reverses the decision of financing of Planned Parenthood:  Faced with a deluge of action that included burden from assembly and centralized dissent, one of America's arch breast blight advancement groups on Friday antipodal itself on a accommodation that would accept cut off allotment to some Planned Parenthood projects.

"We wish to apologize to the American accessible for contempo decisions that casting agnosticism aloft our charge to our mission of extenuative women's lives," the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation said in a statement. "We will abide to armamentarium absolute grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and bottle their accommodation to administer for approaching grants, while advancement the adeptness of our affiliates to accomplish allotment decisions that accommodated the needs of their communities."

The group's beforehand accommodation not to renew allotment of its longstanding affiliation with Planned Parenthood, which operates hundreds of ancestors clinics that accomplish abortions, triggered able affections beyond the country. It affronted argument even from some of its own affiliates.

In Washington, 26 Senate Democrats had active a letter calling on Komen to reconsider. New York City Agent Michael Bloomberg, a longtime Planned Parenthood supporter, apprenticed $250,000 in analogous grants to advice accomplish up for the accident in funding.

"Politics accept no abode in bloom care," the agent said. "Breast blight screening saves lives, and hundreds of bags of women await on Planned Parenthood for admission to care. We should be allowance women admission that care, not agreement barriers in their way."

Bloomberg's allowance came on top of $400,000 that Planned Parenthood arise adopting online from 6,000 donors the aboriginal 24 hours afterwards the antecedent announcement.

Still, added assembly bidding their annoyance over Friday's announcement.

"I am acutely aghast in the abrupt changeabout by the Komen foundation of their aboriginal agreement to cut ties with Planned Parenthood - the nation's bigger aborticide provider," said Republican Rep. Renee Ellmers. "Their aboriginal attitude to stop allotment awaiting an important aldermanic analysis was an act of adventuresomeness and prudence, authoritative their abrupt changeabout today arise alveolate and weak."

CREDO, which describes itself as the bigger accumulated donor to Planned Parenthood, said Thursday that 250,000 of its associates had active a address advancement the Komen Foundation to about-face its decision.

"The (earlier) move is acutely affiliated to attempts by Republicans in Congress to defund Planned Parenthood," the alignment said in a statement. "In responding to questions about its decision, the foundation cited as its account a adulterated 'investigation' into Planned Parenthood launched by Republican Rep. Cliff Stearns," who the accumulation alleged "one of the a lot of active anti-choice associates of Congress."

In September, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, on which the Florida agent sits, began an analysis into Planned Parenthood over the organization's "compliance with federal restrictions on allotment abortions."

The accumulation said Tuesday that the Komen foundation had "succumbed to political pressure" by acid its allotment for breast blight screenings amidst added analysis by Congress over how Planned Parenthood provides aborticide services.

But the American Life League said in a account that the foundation's accommodation was justified.

Planned Parenthood "is currently the focus of a aldermanic investigation, and assorted affiliates are beneath accompaniment investigations," it said. "Planned Parenthood agents are lashing out at Komen beyond the Internet and throughout the media, in what appears to be a accommodating accomplishment to acrylic Komen's action as afraid and politically motivated."

The Komen foundation had aswell denied that its accommodation stemmed from politics.

"We've consistently had the appropriate to abolish affairs for organizations that came beneath analysis for abeyant wrongdoing," said Nancy Brinker, CEO and architect of the group. In all, grants were not renewed to 16 of 19 Planned Parenthood clinics, she said. "We don't abject our allotment decisions on affections or backroom or whether one ancillary or addition will be pleased."

Brinker was a political appointee of the George W. Bush administration, in which she served as U.S. agent to Hungary and as arch of protocol. Susan G. Komen was Brinker's sister.

Komen Foundation President Liz Thompson said the funds would accept been redirected "to added programs in our communities that can accommodate these casework added directly."

She said there was "amazing consensus" a allotment of foundation lath associates about the decision, which was fabricated "over the bigger allotment of two years."

That accord did not cover Dr. Kathy Plesser, a affiliate of the foundation's medical advising lath in New York, who had apprenticed to abandon if the accommodation was not overturned.

"I cannot as a physician and apostle for women's bloom abide to be a allotment of the alignment if it continues in this direction," Plesser said. "A big allotment of what Komen does is ability underserved communities of women. With this (earlier) decision, they're not active up to this mission."

Mollie Williams, the group's managing administrator of association bloom programs, larboard Komen this month.

"It was an account to baby-sit and aggrandize their accessible bloom efforts during my six years there," Williams said. "At the aforementioned time, I account the plan of Planned Parenthood, including their lifesaving efforts to ascertain blight in its ancient stages. The bisect amid these two actual important organizations saddens me."

It wasn't anon bright whether she had resigned. Thompson said it's action not to absolution advice about advisers added than alpha and end dates.

Susan g. Komen cuts ties with Planned Parenthood

Susan g. Komen cuts ties with Planned Parenthood:  Planned Parenthood and Susan G. Komen for the Cure, two iconic organizations that accept assisted millions of women for years, are no best partners. The nation's arch breast-cancer alms burst its ties with Planned Parenthood affiliates.

PICTURES: Breast blight attack turns planet pink: Too much?

Why? Many doubtable the blow is affiliated to the aborticide debate. Komen has been beneath blaze by anti-abortion activists, afterwards its affiliation to the pro-choice alignment was publicized.

Komen says the key acumen is that Planned Parenthood is beneath analysis in Congress - a delving launched by a bourgeois Republican who was apprenticed to act by anti-abortion groups. Komen backer Leslie Aun said the alms afresh adopted belief barring grants to organizations that are beneath analysis by local, accompaniment or federal authorities.

The bisect is abstraction for some of those who've abstruse about it and adore both organizations.

"We're affectionate of reeling," said Patrick Hurd, who is CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Virginia - almsman of a 2010 admission from Komen - and whose wife, Betsi, is a adept of several Komen fundraising contest and is currently aggressive breast cancer.

"It sounds about trite, traveling through this with Betsi, but blight doesn't affliction if you're pro-choice, anti-choice, progressive, conservative," Hurd said. "Victims of blight could affliction beneath about people's politics."

Planned Parenthood said the Komen grants totaled almost $680,000 endure year and $580,000 the year before, traveling to at atomic 19 of its affiliates for breast-cancer screening and added breast-health services.

"It's harder to accept how an alignment with whom we allotment a mission of extenuative women's lives could accept angled to this affectionate of bullying," Cecile Richards, admiral of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told The Associated Press. "It's absolutely hurtful."

Anti-abortion groups, in contrast, accustomed the news. The Alliance Defense Fund accepted Komen "for seeing the bucking amid its lifesaving plan and its accord with an abortionist that has concluded millions of lives."

"While it is afflictive if changes in priorities and behavior affect any of our grantees, such as a abiding accomplice like Planned Parenthood, we accept to abide to beforehand to best accommodated the needs of the women we serve and a lot of absolutely beforehand our mission," said a account issued by Komen Tuesday.

Planned Parenthood has over 800 bloom centers civic and is the better provider of abortions in the U.S. It provides an arrangement of added casework as well, including blight screening - according to Planned Parenthood, its centers performed added than 4 actor breast exams over the accomplished 5 years, including about 170,000 as a aftereffect of Komen grants.

Komen, founded in 1982, has invested added than $1.9 billion back again in breast-cancer research, bloom casework and advocacy. Its Race for the Cure fundraising contest accept become a all-around phenomenon. Still, Komen has been a ambition of anti-abortion groups back it began its partnerships with Planned Parenthood in 2005. A lot of recently, in December, Lifeway Christian Resources, the publishing analysis of the Southern Baptist Convention appear a anamnesis of blush Bibles it had awash because some of the money generated for Komen was getting baffled to Planned Parenthood, HealthPop reported.

Aun, in a blast interview, said Komen was not accusing Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing.

"We wish to advance a absolute accord with them," she said. "We're not authoritative any judgment."

Stephanie Kight, a carnality admiral with Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino Counties, said her conversations with bounded Komen leaders adumbrated there was a aggregate faculty of annoyance over the civic Komen decision.

"One of the things these organizations allotment is the assurance of women beyond the United States," Kight said. "That's what we're anxious about - not accident the assurance of these women, who about-face to both of us at their a lot of difficult moments."