Susan G. Komen and the Planned Parenthood Jihad

By Charles P. Pierce, Esquire Magazine

02 February 12

t is very possible that the women in this country who want to control their reproductive systems, to say nothing of their lives, are going to get fed up very soon with having their freedom to do just that get mucked with by Bible-banging pests, meddling congresscritters, gutless foundations, and the members of the Clan of the Red Beanie. I do not know what vengeance they will undertake, but I suspect it will be fierce.

The latest entrant in the parade of chickens is the Susan G. Komen For The Cure, the country's leading charity dealing with breast cancer, and the organization behind all those pink ribbons you see everywhere, and a group formidable enough to get NFL players wearing pink shoes once a season. A group, then, with some considerable muscle. Which it, sadly, has declined to use on behalf of Planned Parenthood. Instead, it has pulled its funding from PP, spewing a considerable amount of bureaucratic ink to cover its cowardly retreat:

"While it is regrettable when changes in priorities and policies affect any of our grantees, such as a long-standing partner like Planned Parenthood, we must continue to evolve to best meet the needs of the women we serve and most fully advance our mission."

Please tell me specifically how the Komen group has "evolved" in such a way that contributing money to Planned Parenthood no longer can "best meet the needs of the women" it serves, and how it no longer helps the Komen group "fully advance [its] mission." I'm dying to know. I need a good laugh.

Of course, the real reason is a politically motivated audit undertaken a part of a general jihad against Planned Parenthood undertaken by Florida congresscritter Cliff Stearns, the chairman of an oversight subcommittee and a real freaking prize in his own right. Stearns is the guy who added to the Zadroga bill, which provided for federal relief to the first responders who worked on the pile at Ground Zero in New York, the ludicrous requirement that the names of all applicants for such relief first be checked against all terrorist watch-list. He also once attacked PBS because the South African version of Sesame Street introduced a character who was HIV-positive. Like I said, a real prize. Nevertheless, he was enough to scare off the Komen group. It also seems that the Komen group's decision may have been influenced by a woman named Karen Handel, a wingnut anti-choicer who once ran for governor of Georgia, and who is now the group's vice-president for public policy. I would almost guarantee that Handel's hiring was one of those half-assed "common ground" initiatives popular among liberals, and among Democrats, who are tired of all the yelling about abortion and who believe, quite seriously, like children believe in the Easter Bunny, that there are reasonable people in the anti-choice community with whom they can (and should) deal.

This, of course, is all my arse. The anti-choice people want the power to reassert control over what the ladies do with their lady parts, because that is the way Jesus and their daddies intended it to be. Legally, it's not about Roe. It's about Griswold. It will not stop with abortion. It will not even stop with birth control. Good god, would you want your reproductive life to be circumscribed by the likes of Cliff Fking Stearns? The only common ground worth having is the common ground worth fighting for. This is not the way to do it.