Spokane7
68°
February 3, 2012 in City
Phony, vile accusations hurt real women in need
For Planned Parenthood, the silver lining may wind up overshadowing the clouds. But that doesn’t mean those clouds aren’t ugly.
The news broke this week that Susan G. Komen for the Cure was buckling to political pressure and halting donations to Planned Parenthood for the very thing Susan G. Komen for the Cure is theoretically all about: breast cancer prevention. Anti-abortion warriors have apparently persuaded “the world’s leader in breast-cancer awareness” that “ending breast cancer forever” is not in any way contradictory with eliminating funding for, oh, merely tens of thousands of breast- cancer screenings for women who might not otherwise get screened at all.
Or, as I like to think of it: 787 of my neighbors here in the Inland Northwest.
Komen money has paid for 787 breast screenings through Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho since 2008. Nearly $80,000 has come from Komen into the regional Planned Parenthood office, and it’s been vital support for the work the organization does.
Since the news about Komen emerged, Planned Parenthood supporters have created a loud, infuriated tempest – and they’re backing that up with donations. In just days, fundraising nationwide surpassed the loss of Komen funding. Officials at the local office report the same – calls and messages of support, and lots of donations.
“We’re just seeing an enormous outpouring of support,” said Karl Eastlund, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho.
All that’s to the good. But the mechanism behind what happened is frightening, because of its slippery intellectual dishonesty. Abortion foes cannot simply object to the fact that a very small percentage of Planned Parenthood activities involve abortion. That argument ends quickly: Abortion is legal; no government money pays for them. So they turn toward ginning up outrageous, vile accusations, which are compiled into official-looking reports, which are used as the basis for congressional investigations, which are used as the basis to prevent a poor woman in Spokane from getting checked for a life-threatening illness.
Komen insists it didn’t make the change because of long-standing pressure from anti-abortion forces. It says it barred any grants to organizations under any investigation. Planned Parenthood is under congressional inquiry from an abortion opponent in Congress.
This is a funny kind of calculation for Komen to make. By far, the majority of Planned Parenthood services are basic health care. A fifth of American women have visited one of the organization’s clinics. Each year, they provide 750,000 breast exams, 770,000 pap tests and millions of treatments for STDs, according to a letter of support for the organization signed by congressional Democrats.
But the fight against Planned Parenthood comes from the most committed warriors in the anti-abortion camp. Their passion for their ends leads them to sordid means. They allege a whole nefarious world of activities at Planned Parenthood that would shock Keith Richards’ most depraved roadie – partnering with pimps and sex traffickers, protecting sexual predators, putting women’s lives at risk in substandard clinics, and, of course, widespread fraud and abuse.
These claims are made in a report from Americans United for Life, urging congressional investigation. A congressional investigation followed. The investigation is the technical reason Komen has given for rejecting Planned Parenthood funding.
The AUL report is full of footnotes. Sprinkling footnotes, after all, is the way you pretend your report is not baseless. These footnotes are revealing. The prostitution and sex-trafficking charges – the sexy, eye-catching stuff – is based on transcripts of elaborate, preposterous “sting” operations in which abortion warriors dressed up as pimps and put a couple of clinic workers in outrageous situations. A few times, the clinic workers said some disappointing things. Most of the time, they sound baffled.
Elsewhere in the report, there is a glaring failure to understand the difference between causation and correlation, and everywhere there is a strong disconnect between the visceral, sensational characterizations and the thin support for them. “A pattern of Medicaid fraud,” for example, is based on a few cases like a 2009 one with our local office. In that case, “sloppy billing practices” that the state Medicaid chief termed “not egregious” led the Planned Parenthood office to reimburse Medicaid several hundred thousand dollars.
This is the thin gruel upon which the congressional investigation rests, upon which the denial of the Komen Foundation funding rests. It is elaborately empty.
It’s hard to see how Komen won’t come to regret this, if only because its purported goal cannot be served by the divisions that come with the abortion debate. Who knows – it may even take a look at its priorities and reverse course. The organization says it intends to make sure there aren’t gaps in care, but as Komen itself has previously argued, a great value of Planned Parenthood clinics is they provide health care services to women who would not otherwise have them.
“We fill a really unique niche in the health care world,” Eastlund said. “We’ve unfortunately found that when Planned Parenthood isn’t available, needs go unmet.”
Shawn Vestal can be reached at (509) 459-5431 or shawnv@spokesman.com. Follow him on Twitter at @vestal13.
The draw of the unknowable 
greenlibertarian on February 03 at 1:23 a.m.
Well said.
You’re gonna get pummeled on this.
Truthhurts on February 03 at 6:27 a.m.
Komen has obviously abandoned its mission, and a competing organization needs to be formed quickly.
ChefGus/ John Olsen on February 03 at 7:10 a.m.
Those that care about the health care for the low income and youth that are served by Planned Parenthood can simply give the money directly to the local chapter. It cut’s out the “middle persons” ie Komen’s salaried administrators. Works for me. John
tomnsahl on February 03 at 7:52 a.m.
Good article Shawn - let’s stick with “elaborately empty” and not “a funny kind of calculation” when describing the rationale Komen admin used to make this decision.
Catering to the extremists who condone the murder of those who perform LEGAL services is a miscalculation that has and will continue to haunt Komen. That it means a loss of funding for breast cancer screenings is indefensible. I hope we see a retraction of this decision soon.
Plaudits - no pummelling (so far) and wearing red today …
tomnsahl on February 03 at 8:31 a.m.
Komen just reversed the decision !!! Win-win :))
nottored on February 03 at 10:14 a.m.
Lets help organizations that help women by doing breast mamograms that don’t also do abortions.
MrNatural on February 03 at 10:33 a.m.
Thanks Shawn for a well written clear picture on this incident. SGK was wrong to appease “whomever” by risking public health.
I think some Pro-life folks become thoughtlessly sanctimonious with their assumptions about Pro-choice. Nobody wants an abortion and they assert the Pro-life have no more consideration about abortion than a pedicure and that’s not true. I value the work Planned Parenthood does for this community they save lives, provide services for low income and make them healthier. I also believe these puritanical stocks that some wish to impose on others is not the way to go about reducing abortions