Komen, Planned Parenthood need to refocus on common goal: improve women's health

In a stare-down between two incredibly strong and influential women, Nancy Brinker appears to have blinked first.

But this question lingers: Will walking for Komen ever feel the same again?

How regrettable for American women, and those who love them, if the clumsiness with which Susan G. Komen for the Cure tried to walk away from its long relationship with Planned Parenthood damages the cause of improving and saving lives.

For many years, the two groups and their millions of supporters have had a common, invidious enemy: cancer.

But Komen's recent change in grant-making policy forced allies to pick a political side.

Some abortion opponents have long bypassed donating to Komen because of its affiliation with Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides thousands of abortions a year along with many other health services. And abortion foes cheered early in the week after The Associated Press reported that Komen was ending breast-screening grants to Planned Parenthood.

But never before had Komen donors large and small been confronted so starkly with the prospect of having to line up on one side or the other of the abortion debate -- when they simply want to support cancer screening and research.

It's been remarkable to watch over the years as founder Nancy Brinker and her supporters built the Dallas-based organization named for her sister, Susan G. Komen, into a fundraising behemoth.

Millions of women, men and children have worn a pink ribbon, bought a pink-branded product or run and walked miles wearing a dear woman's name on their back in solidarity to find a cure for breast cancer.

This week was disheartening as Komen leaders first explained a new policy to not fund grants to groups under federal or state investigation, then explained that they wanted to fund direct breast-exam services, not make pass-through grants, then said they didn't mean to look politically motivated.

"We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women's lives," the group said in a statement posted Friday at sgk.mn/xBUBAz.

The backpedaling followed a swift, ferocious public backlash that was driven by social media and gave Planned Parenthood a donations bonanza.

The thing is, Komen leadership seems to have anticipated fallout.

On Friday, TheAtlantic.com published an internal memo that instructed Komen affiliates on addressing questions about Planned Parenthood being ineligible for grants during a congressional investigation. (bit.ly/yEfjMD)

According to the memo, Komen makes more than 2,000 grants, worth almost $100 million, each year. And of that, Komen gave $680,000 to 19 Planned Parenthood affiliates for breast-screening referrals in 2011, The Washington Post reported. (wapo.st/yjpZoQ)

Planned Parenthood maintains that 75 percent of its clients have incomes less than 150 percent of the federal poverty line and that the overwhelming amount of its work goes toward contraception, testing or treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, and cancer screening and prevention, with abortion services only 3 percent of it. (wapo.st/zX5Y89)

But critics, including a former employee, insist that those figures are skewed and deceptive. (bit.ly/gkTmMH)

This episode underscored Planned Parenthood's ability to rally supporters. The group has spent decades trying to influence healthcare policy and fend off efforts to end its public funding.

Its president, Cecile Richards, inherited political savvy from her mother, the late Texas Gov. Ann Richards, and sharpened those skills working for U.S. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. According to Cecile Richards' biography, she worked on the state legislative campaign of Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who successfully argued Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 abortion-rights case, at the Supreme Court. (bit.ly/b2E63a)

Planned Parenthood leaders almost surely would have complained about any decrease in Komen grants, whatever the justification. But the way Komen went about it made generating outrage that much easier.

In Friday's apology, Komen said its grant policy would make clear that only groups under investigations that are "criminal and conclusive" would be ineligible. The statement also called for refocusing on work that's in women's best interests.

It would be tragic if the divide over women's best interests has become too wide to bridge.

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