Another Voice in the Komen Controversy

So I was skimming through the paper on Tuesday and a headline on the opinion page caught my eye: "Abortion Reality Lost in Fight." Curious, I read the article. In it, writer Mona Charen notes that in all the chaos surrounding the Komen funding, the truth about abortions and Planned Parenthood has been pushed aside in favor of "ugly politics." Charen, oddly enough, also brings up the statistic Aubry posted about on Tuesday, that of percentages within Planned Parenthood. According to Charen,

"Throughout the Komen imbroglio, PP circulated another misleading statistic – that only 3 percent of PP’s services involve abortions. As Charlotte Allen revealed in a 2007 Weekly Standard essay, that figure is, well, inventive. They arrive at that number by counting every service individually. When a client comes in for an abortion, she gets a pregnancy test (one service), a pelvic exam (second service), an STD test (third service), a breast exam (fourth service), a package of contraceptives (fifth service) and so forth. But calculated as a percentage of revenue generated, abortion accounts for about a third of PP’s business."

If Charen is correct (the article that she referred to can be found here, and it is a fantastic read), then the whole Planned Parenthood controversy becomes that much more important to pro-lifers. Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in the world, regardless of what percentage abortion plays within Planned Parenthood. That alone is worth fighting. Komen defunded Planned Parenthood saying that because PP was under government investigation, Komen is not allowed to fund PP under Komen guidelines. Many have attacked that reasoning, and I agree that it seems suspect. However, as Charen says, Planned Parenthood does not actually provide mammograms, and the key demographic of PP has an extremely low chance of contracting breast cancer. Planned Parenthood has made a big deal of the fact that no Komen money funds abortion, but the Komen money is still used by an organization that does nothing to find the cure Komen seeks, while providing abortions, whether they are funded by Komen or not. The money Komen sends merely frees up other funds to be used for abortion. The mission of Planned Parenthood does not fit with the mission of Komen. Why, then, should Komen fund it at all?


In Christ,
Jacob