Right now, I am trying to bring my blood pressure back down to something close to normal. A little while ago, I read a story, now in wide circulation, in the Washington Post: “Why Komen Defunded Planned Parenthood.”
The Associated Press reports that Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the nation’s leading breast-cancer charity, will cut off its funding to Planned Parenthood affiliates, where the foundation has traditionally paid for preventive screening services.
According to the AP, the move will mean “a cutoff of hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants, mainly for breast exams.”Planned Parenthood confirms that Komen is the first, and only, organization to cut off funding since the Congress began debating the issue in earnest last winter.In some ways, the Komen decision isn’t particularly surprising. The group has been under pressure from anti-abortion rights groups not to fund Planned Parenthood. It also hired a vice president last year who had previously advocated for the group’s defunding in her run for Georgia governor. With a congressional investigation underway, Komen pulled its support.
The Komen Foundation has been skating on thin ice with me for some time. Their pinkwashing efforts have turned a diagnosis of breast cancer into a retail opportunity for corporations all around the country. As a breast cancer survivor, I am aware that fighting disease takes big money, and I understand that a certain amount of commercialization may reap big rewards. I have continued to support my local race because I like the fact that most of the money raised stays in my community and goes to local organizations like Planned Parenthood, who deliver care to the women who need it most and are least likely to have insurance. But this is the end.
I am enraged that the anti-choice lobby has so terrified health care organizations that a misogynist bully like Congressman Cliff Stearns can undermine a decades-long relationship simply by mentioning the A word. Anti-abortion politicians simply will not accept that not every single thing in this world has to do with abortion. To them, women’s health and abortion are one and the same, and to provide funds and/or support to any group that advocates for choice is the same as killing a fetus.
Just as one person can blackmail entire organizations, one person can bring down a villain like Stearns. Remember Joseph Welch, who ended McCarthyism with one simple question? How long will we have to watch as the Susan G. Komen Foundation and others who call themselves our allies betray the cause of women’s health care?
I encourage each of you to contact the national Komen Foundation here Their homepage will give you contact information for your local affiliate. Komen’s Facebook page is here. And this is a perfect opportunity to make an extra donation to your local Planned Parenthood. If you donate, please let them know what prompted your gift.
Sorry, that link didn’t work. Here’s the link to the national office website. http://ww5.komen.org/Contact.aspx
I was so fucking ENRAGED by the story this evening. I set up an ongoing monthly donation to PP to help offset some of this fuckery. I want to help people who need health services, especially in this economy and in rural areas with no other choices.
I’ve been pissed at Komen and the whole pinking everything and endless “awareness” raising, though I do salute their amazing funding for breast cancer screening.
This story just tipped the balance for me. I read some of the comments on the boards and people are PISSED at Komen.
I just thought a breast cancer organization would be more pro-health. Not this bullshit. Geez, I have to go to bed before I continue my rant.
Komen is very much a business, not a non-profit like it proports to be. It’s very agressive with its intellectual property (basically, Komen has trademarked a ton of stuff, including the phrase “for the cure,” the pink ribbon, a bunch of other stuff). They’ve filed over a hundred trademark claims against much smaller and weaker charities and small events over recent years (the one I recall is a group called United Against Lung Cancer holding an event called Kites for a Cure, getting a cease and desist letter). They don’t even litigate the vast majority of the cases.
Komen is a business, and it conducts itself as such. It makes sense for a business to dissassociate itself from a partner who might be considered controversial. A real non-profit, on the other hand, would want to see meaningful work being done and promoting the cause. Which ain’t the case here.
Drahill, I think we agree on this one.
I do feel bad about deserting my local race, because I know and like the people who run it. But they will have to make the same choice I’ve made-whether or not to help some women by hurting others. I’m not willing to pay that price.
I wrote an actual letter to Nancy Brinker, CEO of SGK, which you can read here:
http://nefariousnewt.tumblr.com/post/16865217561/my-letter-to-nancy-brinker-ceo-founder-of-susan-g
I’m not sure when or if she will lay eyes on it, but I figured the site and her email box are likely to be flooded, and I felt an actual letter might carry more weight. I don’t know. I do know this: I have had to watch several women — including my sister-in-law — struggle with breast cancer and its treatment, and at least they had the means. I can’t imagine what it is like for a woman to confront the possibility of this nightmare without resources.
I donated to Planned Parenthood this afternoon, even though I’m stretched thin by unemployment. Some things are just more important, a fact SGK is going to have to come to grips with.
I’m not going to support a non-profit that runs like a corporation. If Komen was truly dedicated to helping as many women avoid breast cancer or beat it as possible, they wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about offending some people with their PP partnership. The whole point of non-profit advocacy is to do the most good for the most people. And this is really, well, the opposite of that. There are a ton of problems with Komen and how its chosen to market itself, but this sort of proves that it’s not even really a charity anymore, but moving more towards a business.
There’s a really common misconception around non-profit organizations that the organizations themselves do nothing to dispel. Non-profit is a term of incorporation for organizations that doesn’t really have much to do with philanthropic goals.
It’s a sad but true thing to say that non-profit organizations are completely focused on the profits. What is meant by the term non-profit is NOT that the organization does not make profits. It means that the profits cannot be taken out of the organization. There can be no profits for investors.
In practice in the United States this means that all of the profits in a given year must be spent on the organization itself: either towards its ostensible goals, or towards the infrastructure of the organization. When I say infrastructure, you can read salaries. They absolutely do look at the bottom line and make decisions based on profits.
This is true for all non-profits, not just Komen.
I keep wanting to type non-prophets.
Exactly, RR. If by “run like a corporation,” you mean run efficiently so as to maximize the amount of revenue going to the cause, I’m all for it. If you mean, “run for the benefit of the executives at the expense of the donors,” then you have Komen.
Komen runs in a way that is opposite of the maxim of decent charities, which is “run yourself out of business.” Ultimately, a charity is seeking something that is antithetical to most businesses – at the end, they are striving for there to be an end to the need for their services (unless the condition they treat or address is one that would be impossible to eliminate). The general goal, in most well-run non-profits, is the maximimazation of cause-related spending and the minimization of overhead. Komen runs as a profit-oriented exercise – but profit in the charitable sense means any income that does not go to overhead and can be repurposed for mission purposes. Profit in the corporate sense is how Komen does it – they have one of the highest overheads in the business (along with the American Red Cross). “Run like a corporation” to me, doesn’t make sense in the non-profit case because the ultimate goal of charity, generally, is to eliminate the need for its services or work – which Komen proports to be doing, but it’s actions clearly indicate it’s not.