Controversy over Komen Care’s Financial Withdrawal
When the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation decided to pull the plug on financial support for Planned Parenthood (PP), there was a huge outcry. Being America’s leading abortion service – providing an estimated 330,000 women with abortions annually – Komen withdrew its funding arguing from PP that it didn’t want to be involved with an organization that was under federal investigation by a congressman. This outraged PP which the media made the most of; 26 US senators signed a condemnation document and up to $1m was pledged to Planned Parenthood to make up for the financial loss it endured from Komen. Thus a couple of weeks ago, Komen reinstated its grant.
But what should have happened? Why was there such a noise? Is there anything suspect about Komen the public should have been made aware of before this came to light? And what other issues as a result have been brought to a head now?
Komen’s Chaos
It seems that Komen – the organization fighting breast cancer – may have some questions to answer. According to a report in Reuters, “in 2011, the foundation spent 15 percent, or $63 million, of its donations on research awards that fund studies on everything from hard-core molecular biology to the quality of breast-cancer care for Medicaid patients.” That means that a huge amount of financial resources was going toward administrative, fundraising and other costs. So while one may be giving their monies to “kill cancer” what they really need to focus on is “killing greed,” since too much money was not going towards the organization’s goal – to find a cure for breast cancer, as Rev Vincent Kunicki said on Facebook.
Then we get back to Planned Parenthood; the organization that doesn’t even offer mammograms, and merely sends its clients elsewhere – perhaps to Komen – to get these necessary anti-breast cancer check-ups. Perhaps one can thus be a bit more sympathetic to the withdrawal of Komen’s finances to PP. But there again, is Komen really committed to helping detect breast cancer, or make money, given its 2011 expenses? Perhaps this is why Komen retracted its decision and pledged to continue funding. Maybe this was more due to all the media noise that was created.
Komen’s Commentators
So what does the man – or woman – on the street think about this? Debra Kerr Hofland on Facebook wrote: “There is a KNOWN, established and proven link between having an abortion before a full-term pregnancy AND getting breast cancer for young women with a family history of breast cancer in a near relative. That possibility is something like 100%! People can ignore this if they want, but that doesn’t change the facts!”