Planned Parenthood Mounts PR Offensive, Claims to Have Recouped Lost Komen Money

I put “claims” in the headline because, frankly, there’s no reason to take anything Planned Parenthood says at face value. It’s an opaque organization that is as much political as medical, and has a vested interest in putting the best possible face on a bad situation it finds itself in. But here’s what it’s saying.

Planned Parenthood said Wednesday that it received more than $400,000 from 6,000 donors in the 24 hours after news broke that its affiliates would be losing grants for breast screenings from the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast-cancer foundation.

Komen, meanwhile, incurred heated criticism from some members of Congress, numerous liberal advocacy groups and some newspaper editorial writers. But it was applauded by many conservative religious and anti-abortion groups that abhor Planned Parenthood for its role as the leading U.S. abortion provider.

The heated criticism Komen is dealing with is being manufactured by Planned Parenthood, its Democrat allies and the mainstream media, of course. Take a close look at this AP “exclusive” story from January 31, that appeared in the Washington Post. It’s so one-side it’s one dimensional. It quotes various PP figures slamming Komen, and quotes Democrat Sen. Patty Murray also slamming the decision, without noting that Murray also has a vested interest in defending PP: She is one of the top recipients of PP campaign cash. In that one story you can see how the three legs of the PP PR stool are working together to prop the group up while deflecting serious and legitimate criticisms of how it operates.

There is, by the way, only a passing mention of the fact that Planned Parenthood is currently not only under investigation by Congress, but in several states from Indiana to Arizona as well. There is also no mention, at all, of the Live Action videos that capture Planned Parenthood staffers in several states engaging in what appear to be a variety of criminal activities. Some of those staffers have since been fired and Planned Parenthood claims it has changed some policies in response to those videos, but the investigations are ongoing nevertheless. Planned Parenthood defenders like Texas Democrat Harold Cook don’t want to talk about that, neither does Planned Parenthood, neither does the media. So they don’t.

But if you’re the Komen foundation, do you want to continue to function as a pass-through that channels funds toward an organization that’s under several criminal investigations nationwide? Their decision makes sense, purely from a self-defense point of view. Add in the fact that America is becoming increasingly, incrementally, pro-life, while Planned Parenthood has revealed itself to be a functioning part of one party’s partisan political operations and Komen is apolitical, and there are several valid reasons for Komen to have cut off Planned Parenthood’s funding. Politics played a role, but there is much more to the story than just politics.

For a more accurate take on what led to Komen’s decision, avoid the mainstream media altogether and read former nurse Jill Stanek’s investigative piece.