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Susan G. Komen For the Cure is a marvel of modern marketing. It turned the entire month of October pink and even turned the word “pink” into a verb that means, or meant, linking a brand to the multi-billion charity campaign known for breast cancer awareness.
Every year, Komen spends tens of millions of dollars on public health education, research, breast cancer screenings and treatment. In 2010 alone, the foundation raised $420 million to fight a disease that kills 40,000 women annually.
And just like that, Komen jeopardized everything with the stupidest marketing decision made in its 30-year history. And because of that, women will be worse off.
In its decision to cut a $700,000 grant to help Planned Parenthood provide breast exams to poor women, Komen said it was concerned about an investigation by Republican U.S. Rep Cliff Stearns, an anti-abortion zealot from Ocala. That’s bunk. Komen defunded Planned Parenthood because among the many things it does, it also provides abortion services.
Komen regained its senses, of course, and restored the funding within three days. But the damage done to Komen’s image is grave.
In response, innumerable men and women pulled out their wallets to support Planned Parenthood, and here’s why: Planned Parenthood helps more people than Komen, providing care to one in five women. Abortion services account for 3 percent of its work, or about 330,000 last year. That compares to 1 million screenings for cervical cancer, 4 million screenings and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, and free contraceptive services to 2.2 million people, through 840 centers across the country.
Critics of Planned Parenthood can’t seem to applaud the basic health care services it provides the poor, services that neither government nor private insurers will provide. At the very least, they should acknowledge the work it does in preventing unwanted pregnancies and reducing the number of abortions -- in ways more effective than abstinence-education programs and true-love-waits campaigns.
But we’re talking sense and evidence here, and the war on Planned Parenthood has nothing to do with either.
It’s ideological slander by the radio shout shows, the Fox phalanxes, the congressmen looking for attention and the pandering vote-seekers. Planned Parenthood is an easy target and beating it up satiates the faithful. Three months ago it was Solyndra. Three years ago it was Acorn. Three elections ago it was John Kerry’s Silver Star. Three decades ago it was the National Endowment for the Arts. Now it’s Planned Parenthood.
Komen had a choice: Stick with rational neutrality or surrender to political contamination. Komen surrendered, before seeing its own fortunes jeopardized.
It’s insulting to your intelligence to have to spell this out, but there’s no connection between abortion and breast cancer. And neither should there be a connection between health care and politics, least of all in the prevention of breast cancer.
Komen let the colorless hysteria of anti-abortion crusaders smear the pink hope of hundreds of thousands of women.
Planned Parenthood will survive. Indeed, it will reap big windfalls from this effort to undermine its care for the poor.
But there’s nothing to celebrate here.
Komen’s brand is blighted. And women will suffer. An organization that once modeled non-partisan engagement allowed fear and fanaticism to tarnish a 30-year legacy in the real war worth fighting: the war on cancer.
Pierre Tristam is editor and publisher of FlaglerLive.com, a non-profit news service based in Palm Coast, Fl.
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