Planned Parenthood: The clash with Komen

For women, it was our “Tahrir Square moment,” said Gloria Feldt in The​DailyBeast.com. The Susan G. Komen foundation, a breast cancer charity that started the pink-ribboned “Race for the Cure,” outraged women across the country last week, after it cut off $700,000 in grants to Planned Parenthood—money that would have financed breast cancer exams in poor communities. Komen had been under pressure from pro-life activists to distance itself from Planned Parenthood because it’s the nation’s biggest provider of abortions (about 300,000 every year) and contraception (to 2.5 million women). In response to this blatant attack on women’s reproductive rights, hundreds of thousands of women signed online petitions, and Planned Parenthood was flooded with $3 million in donations. After three days of rage, Komen backed down and reinstated Planned Parenthood’s funding. Right-wing lawmakers and judges should take note of the fury Komen unleashed, said Margery Eagan in the Boston Herald. “The great, sleeping giant that is pro-choice America” has been woken.

The backlash was hysterical and unwarranted, said Michael Walsh in the New York Post. Komen had entirely legitimate grounds for pulling its money, since Planned Parenthood doesn’t offer breast scans, but merely refers women to third-party providers. The charity wanted to free up funds for programs that actually provide “the lifesaving mammogram.” And yes, Komen also decided it would prefer to be on neutral ground in the controversy over abortion. But as Komen discovered, “the pro-choice lobby won’t let anyone take that middle ground in peace.” Planned Parenthood and its defenders, in fact, acted like mob enforcers, said James Taranto in WSJ.com. They sent a clear message to Planned Parenthood’s other donors: Keep on handing over the cash, or we’ll ruin you.

Is nothing safe from the culture war? asked John McQuaid in Forbes.com. Not so long ago, it seemed as though Americans could accept that charitable organizations, like Komen, sometimes worked with groups that did controversial things, like Planned Parenthood. But in our increasingly polarized society, staying neutral is no longer possible, and everything—including breast cancer, NPR, and the Girl Scouts—is drawn into the red state/blue state civil war. Still, Planned Parenthood and the Komen foundation will probably benefit from the spat, as donations to both organizations have soared over the past week. In the meantime, “the fraying of civil society continues apace.”

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