Antiabortion groups should also take note. If attacking Planned Parenthood has the opposite effect, perhaps a different tactic is in order. Komen and Planned Parenthood have proven they can work together to fight breast cancer. Perhaps they could also join
By JOANNA WEISS
The Boston Globe
In a twisted way, it was the best week for Planned Parenthood in years.
It didn’t take long for social media to burn up with the news that the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, which slaps pink breast-cancer-awareness ribbons on every consumer product under the sun, would no longer give grants to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screening. The fury spawned petitions and Facebook rants and a fundraising drive so huge that, by Thursday, Planned Parenthood was on track to replace most of the money it stands to lose from Komen this year.
Money is great. But publicity is priceless. And last week, Planned Parenthood got precisely what it needs: an association with women’s health, instead of abortions.
“If there’s a silver lining in all of this unfortunate scenario, it’s that it’s creating an opportunity for us to really educate the public about the wide range of preventative services that we offer,” said Tricia Wajda, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. “We haven’t been able to effectively communicate our preventative services before.”
That’s partly because of Planned Parenthood’s enemies: The group has been in the crosshairs of an increasingly desperate anti-abortion movement. In the absence of any real prospect of overturning Roe v. Wade, abortion foes have turned to end-run ideas. They’ve cut federal funding for abortion except in the case of rape, incest, or endangerment of the mother, yet abortions persist. They’ve tried outlawing abortion in backhanded ways, but even Mississippi wouldn’t pass a ballot measure to give a fetus the legal rights of a person.
And so a preferred tactic has been to go after Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider. Last fall, Representative Cliff Stearns, a Republican from Florida, launched a highly dubious investigation into whether Planned Parenthood was misusing public funds. After that, Komen changed its rules to say it wouldn’t give grants to groups under formal investigation — allowing Komen’s CEO to look into a camera with a straight face this week and say, “We will never bow to political pressure.”
Even abortion opponents aren’t buying that line; they’ve been praising Komen up and down the Internet, precisely for bowing to the pressure they’ve exerted. And the apparent lack of forthrightness doesn’t help Komen’s cause. The Texas-based group does plenty of good on behalf of breast cancer victims, but it also has suffered a string of self-inflicted public relations wounds. Half of the country howled with laughter after Komen sponsored pink boxes of KFC fried chicken.
Last week, Komen was in damage control mode again. Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood is using the spotlight to remind everyone how much of its work has nothing to do with abortion. In 2010, according to the group’s annual report, Planned Parenthood provided contraception services for 2.2 million women, along with 3.5 million tests for sexually transmitted infections, 1.4 million emergency contraception kits, 1.1 million pregnancy tests, and 1.6 million cancer screenings — including Pap smears, colonoscopies, and breast exams for poor and rural women who might not have been able get those tests anywhere else.
Planned Parenthood also performed 329,445 abortions, which amounted to 3 percent of its caseload, and 27 percent of the abortions performed in the United States each year. The introduction to its annual report doesn’t mention abortion. That’s wrong; abortion is legal, and Planned Parenthood needs to be forthright.
Antiabortion groups should also take note. If attacking Planned Parenthood has the opposite effect, perhaps a different tactic is in order. Komen and Planned Parenthood have proven they can work together to fight breast cancer. Perhaps they could also join forces to lower abortion rates in the most effective way: With good access to contraception and full-service public health.
