Komen gives to Planned Parenthood: Outrage and Misinformation Ensues

Komen’s Race against Publicity

By Christina Martin on 04/19/2011 – 10:42 am PDT -- Health Care

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A few weeks ago I wrote about the conflict of the Susan G. Komen Foundation, sponsors of Race for the Cure and other breast cancer awareness campaigns, funding Planned parenthood despite the fact that Planned Parenthood doesn’t do mammograms, the leading medical screen for breast cancer. Now Komen is having to respond to its public who wants to know where its cash is being funneled. It turns out, funnel is a good word because what begins in the wide top of Planned Parenthood runs down into community health clinics and other places that actually serve women with breast cancer by providing mammograms. This begs the obvious question: Why not just give the one directly to the programs that actually do the service?

LifeNews reports:

Last year, Komen spokesman John Hammarley confirmed 20 of Komen’s 122 affiliates have made donations to Planned Parenthood and, in 2009, those contributions totaled $731,303. He also confirmed Komen affiliates contributed about $3.3 million to the abortion business from 2004-2009.

While Komen tries to downplay the donations by noting only 19 affiliates give money to Planned Parenthood, the fact remains that it’s $730,303 dollars that those 19 affiliates are giving. That’s a lot of race entries to funnel money elsewhere, but that’s what Komen is finally admitting it’s doing. Life News quotes an email Komen is sending to people:

When a mammogram is indicated, a patient is often referred to a local program, such as the state’s breast and cervical cancer program. In other cases, the Komen Affiliate’s grant to Planned Parenthood may include funds to pay for mammograms outright. When this happens, a local provider performs the mammogram, and is then reimbursed by Planned Parenthood using the Komen grant funds.

This means that if you give money to Komen, or even do something as simple like participate in Race for the Cure where your money might go to Planned Parenthood, then you aren’t really helping poor women get breast cancer services anyway. Planned Parenthood will do the same basic check a doctor will do in any clinic, the free clinics, the sliding scale clinics of the upscale clinics—a basic breast cancer screen. If that very common screen indicates a woman needs a mammogram, they are sent elsewhere anyway.

 

Live Action makes a couple of points in its report on this twisted connection, asking:

Planned Parenthood doesn’t do mammograms themselves. Why then is Komen giving grants to Planned Parenthood to then in turn pay non-Planned Parenthood health centers to provide mammograms? Why not grant funds directly to the centers performing mammograms?

Why is Komen’s giving to the largest abortion provider in the United States. Millions of pro-life women do not feel comfortable going to an abortion clinic to get non-abortion services. Why not give the funds to a non-controversial community health center that all women in the community feel comfortable visiting.

Why exactly? Even if people choose not to believe the science that abortion increases risk of breast cancer, many women would not go to a Planned Parenthood clinic, the number one abortion provider, to get a breast cancer screening anyway. And while the evidence is only anecdotal, the fact remains that many women, my personal friends among them, report being treated less than compassionately at Planned Parenthood facilities when they are not there for abortions. You can dispute this but it’s been reported so much that I wouldn’t step foot in there if I considered myself pro-choice unless I wanted and abortion, simply from the stories.
Komen is supposed to be all about positives. Its bold pink and classy races, its uplifting encouragement of survivor so breast cancer, honored at Race for the Cure and other events—everything Komen puts out there has a message of hope and help for women—except the Planned Parenthood tie. It’s just bad PR to mix these together from a business standpoint. People from both side of the abortion battle will give money to help fight cancer, but only one side is going to give money to an organization that funds abortion. It’s bad business, as well as moral, sense to fund Planned Parenthood.
You can contact Komen here. Tell them what you think. Let them see that it’s time for them to pull away from the death industry and not mix its message for life for women.

 

RU 486 to be LIMITED?

Texas Bill Against RU 486 Drug Gets Abby Johnson’s Testimony
by Steven Ertelt | Austin, TX | LifeNews.com | 4/26/11 11:15 AM

The former director of a Planned Parenthood abortion business who is now pro-life is in Austin, Texas at the state capital today to testify in favor of pro-life legislation that would limit the RU 486 abortion drug.
The mifepristone abortion pill has already killed more than 13 women worldwide, including several women in the United States, and has injured 1,100 women in the U.S. alone as of 2006 FDA figures. Johnson will testify today before the Texas Senate on behalf of legislation that would further regulate the dangerous drug and protect women’s health.
The measure, HB 3408 and SB 1780, was inspired by model legislation developed by Americans United for Life and sponsored by Rep. Jodie Laubenberg and Sen. Dan Patrick.
Charmaine Yoest, the AUL president, noted that abortion practitioners are increasingly expanding their market share of abortions through prescription drugs.
“Women and girls are vulnerable to dangerous drugs cavalierly distributed in ways that the drug manufacturers do not advise. This kind of off-label drug use can have deadly consequences,” she told LifeNews.com.
The bill before the Senate would regulate the dispensing of abortion inducing drugs and would require that they can only be dispensed in accordance with the FDA drug label. The bill would further require that a licensed physician must do a physical examination of the woman before prescribing the sometimes-deadly drugs.
Now a pro-life heroine, Abby Johnson will address the legislation both from her professional experience as a clinic operator in Bryan, Texas, and from her personal life story, having gone through an RU 486 abortion herself.
“It is a real privilege for us at AUL to partner with Abby Johnson and to have someone of her first-hand experience testify on behalf of this important legislation that will protect women and save lives in Texas,” said AUL Vice President for Government Affairs Dan McConchie. “Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers routinely dispense RU 486 off-label in a manner that expands their profits while undermining women’s health. It is important for the legislature to take action now to rein in these dangerous practices.”
Austin Pro-life OB-GYN Dr. Mikael Love will also be testifying regarding the medical standard of care and dangerous side effects of RU-486.
The bill has the support of Texas Alliance for Life, one of the statewide pro-life groups in Texas and the group says the measure would help stop “Planned Parenthood’s off-label use of this dangerous drug.”
Planned Parenthood previously told women using it to use the drug vaginally instead of orally, as recommended by the FDA. That causes the introduction of bacteria that resulted in lethal infections causing their deaths.
Although Planned Parenthood eventually changed its protocol to follow the FDA suggestion to take the drug orally, it still dispenses improper doses of the drug that could still place women at risk.
Rather than backing down from dispensing the abortion drug, Planned Parenthood is increasingly giving it to women, and a 2010survey of Planned Parenthood abortion centers finds a higher number are giving women the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug.
The number of locations dispensing the dangerous abortion drug has risen 130 percent since its last national survey, even though the overall number of Planned Parenthood centers is on the decline.
In January 2008, RU 486 maker Danco Laboratories announced approximately 13 percent of all abortions in the United States involve mifepristone — a number that may seem low but it is double the number of women who used the abortion drug in 2001.
The report also showed 57 percent of places that do abortions now have the abortion drug, compared with just 33 percent in 2001. Ultimately, Danco indicated that 840,000 women in the United States have had abortions with its dangerous drug – a number that is very likely over one million in the two and a half years that have passed.
According to FDA reports as of December 2006, there have now been eight known deaths associated with mifepristone in the U.S., nine life-threatening incidents, 116 blood transfusions, and 232 hospitalizations. In total, more than 1,100 women have had medical problems after using the drug as of that date. The Obama administration has not published new totals, which could have well over 1,500 women in the United States alone facing significant problems after using the mifepristone abortion drug.
ACTION: Contact your Texas legislators here and urge support for the legislation.

I LOVE THIS!! Yes!! Get the parents involved-sex ed MUST start at home!

Parent Education

Planned Parenthood is excited to announce that our new parent education program, Talk F!rst / Hable Pr!mero.

Parents are the first and primary sexuality educators of their children. As a parent, you have a unique opportunity to talk with children early and often about sexuality before they get their information from other sources that may be inaccurate and lacking your own personal values and moral principles.
“I am embarrassed!”, “I don’t know what to say!”, “My child is too young!”, “Talking about sexuality will be like giving my child permission to have sex!” If these worries sound familiar, you are not alone. Since most of us weren’t taught about sexuality, many parents are uncomfortable talking about it.

• Teens consistently report that they would prefer to get information about sex from their parents rather than any other source.
• Texas teens have the highest birth rates and highest repeat birth rates in the US. One in four sexually active teens has a sexually transmitted infection.
• You don’t have to be an expert to talk with your child openly and honestly.
• Sexuality is more than just sexual activity. Children start receiving messages about sexuality at very young ages.
• The sooner that parents start talking to children about sexuality, the more likely children will be to ask questions and seek advice about sex later on in life.
• Understanding sexuality helps kids cope with their feelings and with peer pressure. It helps them take charge of their lives and have loving relationships, and helps protect them from sexual abuse.
• Young people who talk with their parents about sexuality are more likely to postpone having sex and make healthier decisions about sexual behavior.

Your child’s heath is too important to let fear and embarrassment get in your way! We can help by providing you with information and strategies to have discussions about sexuality.
Start talking. Keep talking. Learn how with Planned Parenthood.
The Talk F!rst program consists of 1- to 2-hour workshops to provide parents with the tools and resources needed to start the conversation today. Workshops can be hosted in homes, schools, churches, synagogues, PTA meetings, moms' night out, brown bag lunches at the office, or anywhere else that eight or more parents are gathered. Workshops are free and provided as a community service by Planned Parenthood of the Texas Capital Region with generous support from several foundations.

Contact: Kristin McDuffie at 512.485.0130 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 512.485.0130 end_of_the_skype_highlighting ext. 417 or e-mail parents@ppaustin.org

En Español: Janet Punch at 512.485.0130 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 512.485.0130 end_of_the_skype_highlighting ext.416 or e-mail janet.punch@ppaustin.org

Without Medicaid 90,000 Texan Women will LOSE their healthcare!

LATEST ATTACK ON PLANNED PARENTHOOD SHREDS MEDICAID PROGRAM

by Planned Parenthood of the Texas Capital Region on Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 3:31pm

LATEST ATTACK ON PLANNED PARENTHOOD SHREDS MEDICAID PROGRAM

Reckless new bill would eliminate health care for 90,000 Texas women



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 03, 2011


AUSTIN, TX -- Today, the Senate Health and Human Services Committee considers a bill to block access to birth control, cervical cancer screenings, and other basic reproductive health care for more than 90,000 Texas women by banning Planned Parenthood from continued participation in the Medicaid Women's Health Program (WHP). SB 1854 by Senator Robert Deuell eliminates the critically necessary Medicaid Women's Health Program completely if Planned Parenthood successfully litigates against the ban on its health centers' participation.

The Senate bill bans Planned Parenthood from providing basic health care including breast and cervical cancer screenings and birth control to low-income women who qualify for the Medicaid program. Almost half of the participants in the program receive their primary health services, in addition to family planning, from a Planned Parenthood health center. In many instances, Planned Parenthood is a health care safety net, providing the only health care services patients receive annually.

Per federal and state law, no Medicaid funds are used for abortion services. Regular, mandated audits by the Health and Human Services Commission confirm that no federal or state funds are used for abortion services—directly or indirectly. Banning Planned Parenthood's continued participation vastly reduces the fiscal savings of the program—savings of more than $40 million in 2008 and generating $9 in federal funding for every $1 spent by Texas.

Planned Parenthood issued a letter to Senator Deuell today clarifying that Planned Parenthood will pursue litigation if necessary to ensure that they can continue to serve the low-income Texans who rely on Planned Parenthood health centers for their health care.

"This bill dictates where women can go for their reproductive health care and engages in reckless politics by dismantling a successful program that saves over $40 million in taxpayer funds every year," said Jeffrey Hons, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Trust of South Texas.

"All health centers serving Medicaid clients are already stretched to the max, serving the thousands of Texans who depend on their services. By banning Planned Parenthood from providing health care to more than 40,000 Texas women through the Medicaid Women’s Health Program, this Senate bill shreds the health care safety net that saves lives and dollars. Planned Parenthood is prepared to move forward with a lawsuit if that’s what it take to continue to provide cervical cancer screenings and other health care to the women who depend on our health centers," stated Peter J. Durkin, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast.

“Many areas in Texas have only one provider where women can access the services through the Medicaid Women’s Health Program. That provider, generally a Planned Parenthood health center, is the only place where women can receive these life saving programs,” said Tony R. Thornton, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Association of Lubbock.

Contact: Sarah J. Wheat, cell 512-657-3311 or Rochelle Tafolla, cell 713-775-8099

###




For more than 75 years, Planned Parenthood has been the most trusted source of nonprofit reproductive health care in Texas. Planned Parenthood's health centers provide health care to more than 263,000 Texans each year including 121,526 screenings for cervical cancer; 123,122 screenings for breast cancer screenings; and 383,240 tests/treatments for sexually transmitted infections.

Sometime I can't believe I work here...

House reiterates drive to re-direct money away from family planning services

By teaton@statesman.com | Friday, May 6, 2011, 11:23 AM

Rep. Sid Miller, R-Stephenville, instructed House conferees who will work with senators to hammer out the state’s budget bill not to put money back into family planning services that the House diverted to other programs, such as one for autism.
The House voted 86-39 to adopt Miller’s non-binding recommendations.
Miller said he’s trying to keep state money from Planned Parenthood, an organization that many Republicans — nationally and in Texas — have targeted.
Miller admitted that the services won’t go to pay for abortions, but he said that it would have gone to organizations — such as Planned Parenthood — that perform abortions.
Rep. Mark Strama, D-Austin, objected to Miller’s suggestion. He asked members not to direct funds away from family planning.
Pleading to Republicans and pro-life lawmakers, Strama said family planning services should be supported. They are the most effective way to reduce the number of abortions, he said.
He also said that Planned Parenthood isn’t the only organization that would benefit from state money to pay for planning family services.

It's Margaret Sangers battle...all over again!

news

Point Austin: Making Women Suffer

The self-appointed defenders of life and family values are neither

By Michael King, Fri., April 22, 2011

Opponents of Planned Parenthood insist that giving the organization federal dollars allows it to spend other money in its budget to provide abortions. That is not possible; there is no other money.
– Clare Coleman, National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association
I rarely use this space to call attention to another Chronicle News story – I presume readers who've gotten this far know how to turn the page – but I'm making an exception this week for "The War on Women's Health," Jordan Smith's excoriating report on the Texas Legislature's determination to use the current fiscal crisis as an excuse to attack public services for health care, most visibly symbolized by Planned Parenthood, the nonprofit organization that for decades has delivered below-cost health services for millions of women in Texas and nationwide. From our cover image and headline – "Toxic Shock" – you can tell the Chronicle editors consider this an important story. Creative Director Jason Stout designed an image to catch readers' attention and to drive home the underlying thrust of Smith's story: that the coordinated, hysterically dishonest political assault on Planned Parenthood is also an attack on women and the family, and beyond that, on the very notion of public health care of any kind. As Planned Parenthood's Cecile Richards put it succinctly, "They are going after women's health."
Make no mistake, it's a nationally coordinated assault, as Republican (and some Democratic) politicians in Congress and in legislatures across the country file hundreds of "anti-abortion" bills that are in actual fact anti-woman bills, designed to make certain that women do not have independent, adult control over their own bodies or medical decisions. No matter how many times it is demonstrated that restricting access to health care and contraception in fact increases abortions, the anti-woman bills keep coming. "I sometimes wonder if the anti-choice plan is not actually to prevent abortion," Katha Pollitt wrote last week in The Guardian, "but simply to make it as awful as possible for the woman. Many of the 370-plus anti-abortion bills now wending their way through state legislatures are simply about creating misery, anxiety and fear – forcing women to view ultrasounds, see anti-choice counsellors, listen to scripts claiming falsely that abortions cause breast cancer and infertility, and wait, wait, wait for their procedures."
Such malicious laws are not "pro-life" – they're anti-life, anti-sex, anti-women.

Up Yours

As malevolent as this reactionary crusade has been, it has not been without moments of mordant comedy. Arizona Sen. John Kyl was nationally mocked for his floor declaration that 90% of Planned Parenthood's work is abortions (the figure is actually 3%), and then for his spokesman's defense that Kyl's lie was "not intended to be a factual statement." At the Lege, the spectacle of perennial House GOP backbencher (champion calf-roper and scourge of feral hogs) Sid Miller carrying the mandatory ultrasound bill precisely reflected GOP disrespect for women's rights, and Houston Democratic Rep. Carol Alvarado's brandishing of the invasive ultrasound vaginal probe made visible the actual GOP contempt for limited government.
The women reps are to be commended, I suppose, for holding their tempers as their majority colleagues enacted legislation explicitly reminding them of their second-class status (or third-class, behind fetuses). When the conference committee returns this abomination matched with the equally ludicrous Sen. Dan Patrick's companion bill, I recommend an amendment mandating unsedated, narrated colonoscopies of the men involved in all these unplanned pregnancies – and of the male legislators sufficiently arrogant to vote for these bills.

The Larger Imbalance

As Smith reports at length, all this fulmination about the supposed "abortion industry" simply provides rhetorical cover for the larger Republican project, undermining all forms of publicly supported health care, and most specifically those programs designed for women and the family. "[T]he funds used for family planning," Smith writes, "provide low-income women with guaranteed access to very basic health services – including annual gynecological exams, counseling on pregnancy planning and access to birth control, screening for breast and cervical cancers, testing for hypertension and tuberculosis, and screening for sexually transmitted infections, including HIV." Moreover, she continues, "In the absence of access to reproductive health care in Texas, the Guttmacher Insti­tute reports, the level of abortion would be expected to rise 22%." What possible benefit (even financial) to Texas citizens can come from defunding preventative medicine; increasing the number of late-discovery hypertension and cancers; promoting infectious diseases and unwanted, emergency pregnancies; and yes, inevitably multiplying the number of preventable, late-stage abortions?
This is not "pro-life"; it is not even remotely rational public policy – it is male-hysterical, woman-spiting madness rooted in the reactionary conviction that "sex without consequences" (horrors!) is a secular heresy, to be stamped out by visiting those grim consequences on women (only) who dare to have sex without the personal permission of pomposities like John Kyl, Sid Miller, or the Pope himself. As a direct result of these illogical and misogynistic laws, more women will suffer and die, at greater expense to the state of Texas. Whatever else this legislation is, it is neither life-affirming nor conservative in any serious meaning of those terms.
Of course, during this session the Planned Parenthood episode can also stand for the entire legislative budget process, which purports to save health care by slashing funding for Medicaid and nursing homes, to save education by defunding public schools and firing teachers, to save universities by running them "like a business." In each instance, public services that have been built up over generations, paid for and shared by the entire community, are to be privatized and only available to those who can directly afford them, in the name of a political abstraction called a "balanced budget." But there's nothing balanced about it – it's a one-sided attack on the shared rewards and responsibilities of community, with the inevitable result that the rewards all go to the wealthy and powerful, and the weakest go to the wall.

Wow this is super interesting! Alterior motive in de-funding?? I think so...

Why Planned Parenthood funding is LGBT issue

Agency under attack by right wing is about more than abortions

Phyllis Guest

PHYLLIS GUEST | Contributing columnist

Bernard Baruch said it first in the 1940s; Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger shortened it in the 1970s, and Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan phrased it most succinctly in the 1980s: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
Apparently, many Americans have not heard — or have not agreed with — that simple statement.
Consider, for example, current efforts in Washington, D.C., and nationwide to defund Planned Parenthood.
The efforts made news when, on April 8, Arizona Republican Jon Kyle announced on the floor of the Senate that abortions comprise “well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.”
The organization countered that abortions are only 3 percent of the organization’s services. Kyle’s staff asserted that his remark “was not intended to be a factual statement” and then edited the Congressional Record to say that abortion is simply “what Planned Parenthood does.”
Back in Austin for Easter recess, Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas picked up Kyle’s theme. On April 20, Cornyn assured The Texas Tribune’s Emily Ramshaw that “he’s been told 98 percent of the services Planned Parenthood offers to pregnant women are abortion-related.” His staff added that the senator would not join “the nickel tour at any Planned Parenthood centers.”
Take that, you sinners.
In fact, the latest figures — from 2010 — show that Planned Parenthood of North Texas provided 6,000 abortions, 43,000 pap smears and many more thousands of low-cost screenings for cancer and other deadly ailments.
In addition, PPNT provides sexual and general health services for men and women for modest, fixed charges.
So why should any of this interest those of us in the local LGBTQA community? Think children’s well-being, sex education and tax rates. All are intertwined.
Start with the well-being of children. On April 7, State Attorney General Greg Abbott and former first lady Laura Bush announced an effort to recruit more volunteers for the Texas Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) program. Their plea is urgent — because Texas now has 42,000 children in its foster care system. Those 42,000 children were unwanted at birth or have been abused or abandoned since.
Many Texas politicians consider members of our community who might like to foster or adopt them unworthy. Yet few if any of our oh-so-righteous pols have stepped up to adopt or even advocate for these children.
Next, consider sex — sex education, that is.
In Texas, most notably in the public schools, sex ed is either all about abstinence or altogether absent. Thus, countless Texans lack basic information on contraceptive options. They cannot choose the best protection for themselves and their partners.
Small wonder Texas has so many teenage mothers and leads the nation in teens with two or more offspring. Rates of sexually transmitted diseases among young Texans also are startlingly high — and even higher among some minority groups.
Our state’s macho tradition may even encourage unprotected sex.
Finally, take the issue of how tax dollars are spent in Texas.
Unless conservatives come up with enlightened ways to lift “the least of these our brethren” out of poverty, which they seem disinclined to do, some tax dollars will go towards basic services for the poor.
An estimated 60 percent of Texas mothers are so impoverished that physicians and hospitals must compete for scarce Medicaid dollars to fund prenatal care and delivery. Many families rely on the state’s meager Temporary Assistance to Needy Families — about $260 a month — for basic foodstuffs. Texas public schools provide lunch and often breakfast so children will not spend the day hungry and go home ill.
Keep in mind that Planned Parenthood, now almost a century old:
• Is prohibited by law from using tax dollars to fund abortions. Of course, money is fungible, but Congress never provides more than one-third of the dollars needed to give all low-income and uninsured persons access to contraceptives and sexual health care. There is no tax money to free up for abortions. Support for Planned Parenthood Surgical Health Services, the separate entity that performs abortions in North Texas, comes entirely from patient fees and private donations.
• Provides services without discrimination to persons of all races and ethnicities, young and old, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. Here in North Texas, Planned Parenthood works with other nonprofits, including those most closely associated with the LGBT community, to assure the availability of confidential, low-cost testing and expert counseling for HIV/AIDS as well as all other STDs.
• Furnishes important support to LGBTs who are parents, parents of LGBT children, and LGBT children of all ages. For example, a recent workshop in Fort Worth was entitled “LGBT Issues — You’ve Got Questions, We’ve Got Answers.” Leading the workshop was a facilitator with an master’s degree in social work and years of experience spent teaching undergraduate and graduate courses on sexual health.
So an argument in support of Planned Parenthood is not an argument for abortion. It is simply an argument against ignorance.
Phyllis Guest lives in Dallas and is an activist on LGBT and other progressive issues