October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and breast cancer detection, prevention, research and treatment are of the utmost importance due to the devastating impact that this disease has on women and their families.
Everywhere you turn you see solicitations from Susan G. Komen “Race for the Cure.” Just what does this organization do with the donations they receive? Pro-life citizens who are interested in fighting this deadly disease should be aware that this organization has had a policy of explicitly allowing its state affiliates to give monetary grants to abortion providing facilities.
While not all state affiliates give grants to Planned Parenthood, each state affiliate has been required to forward at least 25% of funds raised in their state to the Komen National office in the past. I know there has been a huge backlash the past couple of years against the Komen Foundation and I hope they’ve totally revised their policies. But I haven’t seen anything yet to convince me that they have.
Click here for breast cancer organizations that do not support abortion facilities or destructive human embryo experimentation.
Please scroll down and review any of the related articles below for more information.
1. Susan G. Komen for the Cure awards 72 grants to Planned Parenthood in 2000-2005 period.
2. "Race for the Cure" - Wolf in Sheep's Clothing?
3. Open letter To: 2008 Komen, Houston Race for the Cure
From: Kathy West, Montgomery Co., TX
4. Organizations That Support Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Serving the King,
Betty Anderson
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1. Susan G. Komen for the Cure awards 72 grants to Planned Parenthood in 2000-2005 period.
http://aipnews.com/talk/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=8684&posts=7
(From the Bioethics Defense Fund website)
Know the Facts about the Komen-Planned Parenthood Connection
Media contact:
Dorinda C. Bordlee, Esq.,
504-231-7234
info@BDFund.org
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Breast cancer detection, prevention, research and treatment are of the utmost importance due to the devastating impact that this disease has on women and their families.
Pro-life citizens who are interested in fighting this deadly disease should be aware that one breast cancer organization, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, has a policy of explicitly allowing its state affiliates to give monetary grants to abortion providing facilities.
Not all state affiliates give grants to Planned Parenthood using the 75% of the funds that they raise in a state. However, each state affiliate must forward at least 25% of funds raised in their state to the Komen National office. These funds are under the discretion of a board that refuses to disassociate itself from Planned Parenthood as shown by the facts below:
- Planned Parenthood is the number one provider of abortions in the United States. During its 2005-2006 fiscal year, the nonprofit Planned Parenthood Federation of America performed a record 264,943 abortions according to its annual report.
- At least 13 Susan G. Komen for the Cure affiliates have awarded at least 55 grants to Planned Parenthood afflilates during the years 2000 through 2005. These grants are reported on the Susan G. Komen website by entering "Planned Parenthood" on Komen's searchable grant page.
- Komen claims that money raised by affiliates who give money grants to Planned Parenthood is for breast services only. However, Planned Parenthood documents in its 2005-2006 annual report that 9,900 more abortions were performed and 81,500 fewer breast exams were provided in 2005 than in 2004.
- KOMEN'S EXPRESS POLICY ALLOWING PLANNED PARENTHOOD GRANTS: Because Komen refused their request to stop providing grants to Planned Parenthood, Curves, a privately held fitness franchise firm owned by women's health advocate Gary Heavin, ceased supporting Komen events. Here is Komen's response by its Public Relations Manager Kristin Kelly:
"The Komen Foundation is confident that none of its community Affiliates have stopped funding Planned Parenthood as a result of the pressure from Curves, Operation Save America or any other organization. In fact, when faced with opposition from Curves or the threat that Curves franchises would no longer support the Foundation unless Planned Parenthood funding was eliminated, the Komen Foundation told Mr. Heavin (founder and CEO of Curves) that we would not, in any way, undermine the integrity of our grant-making process. In addition the Foundation told Mr. Heavin that it would continue to allow Komen Affiliates to provide breast health education and screening grants to Planned Parenthood if the grant application was approved through the process outlined above. As a result, Curves chose to suspend its support of Komen Affiliate events, including sponsorship of the Komen Race for the Cure (r). In 2003, Komen Affiliates awarded $38.4 million in grants to support community outreach programs, including 21 grants to their local Planned Parenthood chapters totaling more than $475,000."
Source: Komen website as copied into Powerpoint Presentation by Eve Sanchez, former Komen board member, http://stopabortionbreastcancer.org/talks/denver_silver060930.pdf
- In March 2008, the St. Louis Archdiocese renewed its June 2007 policy of non-support for Komen due to Komen's national policy of allowing affiliates to give grants to Planned Parenthood, and of promoting embryonic stem cell research. This statement was made even though the Missouri affiliate did not give grants to Missouri Planned Parenthood because at least 25% of locally raised funds are under the discretion of Komen's national office.
Background Facts: Why is Komen tied to Planned Parenthood?
- Nancy Brinker, Komen Founder, was listed as an advisory board member in the 2002 annual report of Planned Parenthood of North Texas, the fifth largest Planned Parenthood affiliate in the nation.
- In September of 2004, Eve Sanchez Silver, a breast cancer survivor and charter member of Komen's Hispanic/Latina Advisory Council, resigned from Komen, stating, "As a Christian and life affirming citizen I can not reconcile the Foundation's decision to affirm life with one hand and support its destruction with the other."
BDF encourages you to contact Susan G. Komen for the Cure (5005 LBJ Freeway, Suite 250, Dallas, TX 75244) and call for an end to all associations between Komen affiliates and Planned Parenthood, for funding of further studies on the link between breast cancer and abortion, and for an end to the endorsement of research that leads to the destruction of any human life.
Please encourage the Komen Foundation to focus all funds on research to find causes and cures for breast cancer and refuse to give financial or other support to any abortion provider or organization that promotes the destruction of human life.
ALTERNATE BREAST CANCER ORGANIZATIONS:
Click here for breast cancer organizations that do not support abortion facilities or destructive human embryo experimentation.</< a>
Copyright 2007 - Bioethics Defense Fund. Permission granted for unlimited use. Credit required..
For more information, contact us at info@bdfund.org or use our contact form.
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2. "Race for the Cure" - Wolf in Sheep's Clothing?
Many pro-life people have no idea of the link between the Susan G Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and Planned Parenthood....and of the large amount of research showing a strong correlation between abortion and subsequent breast cancer risk.....here's an FYI...
Thanks, Shannon Goldy, CWA, for sending this timely article...
Life or death?
Abortion Present: Group that fights breast cancer maintains troubling ties to Planned Parenthood | Alisa Harris
http://www.worldmag.com/articles/article.cfm?eid=A5525FE5-A196-C670-1...
Associated Press/Photo by Lauren Victoria Burke
Eve Sanchez Silver had her first abortion at age 16 and her second at age 21. In 1998 she started fighting her first of two bouts with breast cancer, undergoing a lumpectomy, mastectomy, and breast reconstruction. Silver has come to believe that her abortions increased her breast cancer risk, so when she discovered she was active in an organization-Susan G. Komen for the Cure-that gives grants to Planned Parenthood, she thought it was "really horrific."
Silver, director of Cinta Latina Research, helped found a minority advisory council for Komen, served on a review board, and spoke on its behalf until she resigned in 2004. "They were supposed to be a life-affirming organization and this other organization was killing people," Silver said. "I resigned because I felt that they were being duplicitous and that they were not supporting the very women they claimed they were supporting."
Other pro-life activists-Karen Malec with the Coalition for Abortion/Breast Cancer, and Leslie Hanks, vice president of Colorado Right to Life, among others-have drawn attention to the grants for years. Komen counters that the money goes to breast cancer screening, not abortions, and says that newer research disproves any abortion-breast cancer link.
Local Komen affiliates, not the national organization, give local Planned Parenthoods grants marked "breast cancer screening, education and treatment." In 2008, 22 Komen affiliates gave grants to Planned Parenthood organizations or programs connected with Planned Parenthood. The dollar amount for 2008 is not yet available, but in the 2006-2007 fiscal year, Komen gave Planned Parenthood approximately $100,000 in grants.
For women in remote areas, "oftentimes these Planned Parenthood programs are really the only option," said John Hammarley, news bureau chief for Komen. Komen's Southern Nevada affiliate funds a Mammovan that parks at both local churches and Planned Parenthood offices, providing free screening and diagnostic mammograms. But most of the 2008 programs serve urban, not isolated, populations. Komen affiliates have always funded multiple organizations from the same geographical area, so in these cases Planned Parenthood isn't the only option.
Hammarley said the grants receive the usual oversight: Local affiliates audit annually to make sure the money is going to the proper place. But Planned Parenthood has a history of shuffling money around, said both Malec and Hanks. In Colorado, for instance, Planned Parenthood split into two groups so that one group could receive state funds for contraceptives and cancer screening without violating the rule against state funding for abortions. In 2001, an independent audit found that the group receiving state funds was subsidizing the rent of the group doing abortions, so the state ceased the grants. (Planned Parenthood said it was unfairly targeted because it passed an earlier state audit.)
"They're not known for their honesty," Hanks said, and money is fungible-meaning that it can be shifted from one place to another. But in this case, both Hanks and Malec said they have no proof that Komen money goes to anything but breast cancer screening. (Planned Parenthood did not answer requests for an interview.)
Some pro-life groups have argued that there is a link between abortion and breast cancer. According to Angela Lanfranchi, a breast cancer surgeon, women who have a full-term birth have reduced breast cancer risk, so abortion removes this protection. Most doctors agree. But Lanfranchi would add that abortions, both spontaneous and induced, create cancer-vulnerable breast tissue-an assertion other doctors dispute but one she says has its basis in the basic textbook physiology of the breast. A 1989 New York study looked at fetal death certificates and then looked for the mothers in breast cancer registries, finding higher odds for cancer in women under 40 who had either a spontaneous or induced abortion.
Komen says newer evidence contradicts this. In 2003, 100 experts from the National Cancer Institute concluded there was no link between breast cancer and either miscarriages or induced abortions. Harvard University and Oxford University have found similar results in the past two years.
With the possible link between abortion and breast cancer and reason to distrust Planned Parenthood, Malec called the grants unnecessary: "They do not have to give funds to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings. There are many other organizations that can receive those funds, and I think by giving them these funds it whitewashes what Planned Parenthood does."
Copyright © 2009 WORLD Magazine
January 17, 2009, Vol. 24, No. 1
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3. TO: 2008 Komen, Houston Race for the Cure
From: Kathy West, Montgomery Co., TX
As a breast cancer survivor I was very excited about participating in the 2008 Komen Houston Race for the Cure. I spent a great deal of time making phone calls and on line forming a team of 28 and encouraging them to get sponsors. A week before the big day I received 3 e-mails from people I had requested support from with the discouraging message that a portion of the
monies that I thought went to cancer research was being given in the form of grants to Planned Parenthood which is the biggest abortion provider in the nation.
I am appalled and will never again support the Komen Foundation until I have assurance there are NO monies going to Planned Parenthood or any other organization that ignores the sanctity of life and is involved in killing babies.
To save the life of a cancer patient only to take the life of an innocent unborn baby in such a disgusting and inhumane manner is in my opinion NOT a viable trade off. Proponents of abortion can demand it is the right of a woman to chose and to that I agree however the choice of a RESPONSIBLE woman is to choose to take precautionary measures before the fact not afterward when it involves taking the choice away from an innocent, unborn baby. The percentage of pregnancies resulting from rape or incest is minute in comparison to pregnancies from just plain carelessness.
The Komen Foundation has grown over the years into a huge organization that I believe started out with the intent of finding a cure for this dreaded disease however I believe your purpose has been distorted and your goals are tainted with the blood of the innocent unborn.
I am committed to informing as many people as I can that the Komen Foundation distributes grants to such organizations as Planned Parenthood under the cover of providing mammograms etc. to the uninsured and to lower income women. It is a proven fact that girls and women who have had abortions are at a much higher risk of getting breast cancer so in reality you help fund a means by which breast cancer can survive.
I would urge you to re-think your position and your policies and remove the name of Komen from the ranks of those who promote abortions if in fact you truly have a desire to stop the killer CANCER.
Respectfully,
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4. Organizations That Support Embryonic Stem Cell Research
The following is a list of organizations that have expressed support for human embryonic stem cell research. Research with embryonic stem cells necessitates the destruction of human embryos.
Information on the organizations' support for embryonic stem cell research comes from three sources: policy statements, membership in coalitions that lobby for the research and signatures on letters expressing public support for the research. Some organizations listed also contribute funding for embryonic stem cell research.
A few notable names from the list:
- American Cancer Society
- American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
- American Heart Association
- American Medical Association
- Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation
- Harvard University
- Lance Armstrong Foundation
- March of Dimes
- Michael J. Fox Foundation
- Muscular Dystrophy Association
- Susan G. Komen Foundation
- University of Wisconsin-Madison
- WiCell Research Institution
- Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation
- Wisconsin Association for Biomedical Research and Education
Source: Pro-Life Wisconsin (info@prolifewisconsin.org)
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