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.
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