For the Political Agenda, not the Cure

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure organization has stepped in a big pile of PR trouble. Trouble of its own making. Officially, the organization has ended grant support for Planned Parenthood because that organization is currently under investigation by Congress.

SGK recently changed its policy on handing out grants; no group under investigation by any level of government gets money now.

PP is under investigation simply because Republicans in Congress are convinced that PP uses federal money to pay for abortions. The perfect example of their belief came last April when Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, declared on the Senate floor that performing abortions is 90 percent of the organization's work.

His direct quote? "If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood, and that's well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does."

When people living in the real world pointed out that abortions account for about THREE percent of PP's activities, Kyl's office issued the political spin of the decade. The office issued a statement saying Kyl's "remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, a organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does subsidize abortions."

Not intended to be a factual statement. Okay.

What does that have to do with the SGK folks? They recently hired former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, a well-known abortion foe, as their Vice President for Public Policy. It may be a coincidence that the biggest policy decision SGK made after hiring Handel was shutting off the money flow to a target of right-wing ire. But I doubt it.

The sad part of this episode is that it fits in with SGK's tendency to put effort into things that have no relationship to the fight against cancer. Or finding the cure. SGK is the organization that has trademarked the phrase "for the cure" and has sued anyone who innocently tried to use it. I'm sure women dealing with breast cancer were gratified to know that dollars donated to SGK were being spent on that kind of legal action.

I haven't given money to SGK for years now. I give to the American Cancer Society. Through my participation in Relay for Life, I've come to know people in the local ACS office, and I know this: They care about cancer patients. Period. Political and legal crap is just that -- crap. You got cancer? ACS has programs to help. They're funded through donations.

Want to donate to a group focused on battling cancer and helping cancer patients without other agendas? Click the button in the top right corner. Let Karen Handel and Susan G. Komen find donations somewhere else.