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Friday, February 03, 2012

More Komen. The delightful Ms. Karen Handel, and such.

Headline at Crooks and Liars, "Komen Executive Behind Defunding of Planned Parenthood Was Endorsed by Sarah Palin in 2010."

Ouch. What a piece of work, endorsed by one. CL mentions the infamous "Cry me a river" Tweet, linking to the image here. MoveOn.org has the telling tweet too.

That was far from smart for the woman to have tweeted. Dumber still, the scrubbing attempt. It was archived before the scrub, so how does that make Ms. Integrity of the Koman shop look? Right. That bad.

Do you want a Raw Story? That link = "Komen Foundation ousted their Democratic lobbyist just before hiring Karen Handel."

Atlantic has extended coverage, including:

Update: Mollie Williams, the Komen official who resigned to protest the organization's decision to defund Planned Parenthood, sent me a statement, which is reprinted in full at the end of this post.

An entirely avoidable, and deeply regrettable, controversy has been raging this week over the decision by the (formerly highly esteemed) Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, the world's leading breast-cancer-research advocacy group, to cut its support for Planned Parenthood, which used Komen dollars (about $600,000 annually) to pay for breast-screening exams for poor people. (The Atlantic's Nicholas Jackson has an excellent summary of the controversy so far.)

Komen, the marketing juggernaut that brought the world the ubiquitous pink-ribbon campaign, says it cut off Planned Parenthood because of a newly adopted foundation rule prohibiting it from funding any group that is under formal investigation by a government body. (Planned Parenthood is being investigated by Representative Cliff Stearns, an anti-abortion Florida Republican, who says he is trying to learn if the group spent public money to provide abortions.)

But three sources with direct knowledge of the Komen decision-making process told me that the rule was adopted in order to create an excuse to cut off Planned Parenthood. (Komen gives out grants to roughly 2,000 organizations, and the new "no investigations" rule applies to only one so far.) The decision to create a rule that would cut funding to Planned Parenthood, according to these sources, was driven by the organization's new senior vice president for public policy, Karen Handel, a former gubernatorial candidate from Georgia who is staunchly anti-abortion and who has said that since she is "pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood." (The Komen grants to Planned Parenthood did not pay for abortion or contraception services, only cancer detection, according to all parties involved.) I've tried to reach Handel for comment, and will update this post if I speak with her.

The decision, made in December, caused an uproar inside Komen. Three sources told me that the organization's top public-health official, Mollie Williams, resigned in protest immediately following the Komen board's decision to cut off Planned Parenthood. Williams, who served as the managing director of community-health programs, was responsible for directing the distribution of $93 million in annual grants. Williams declined to comment when I reached her yesterday on whether she had resigned her position in protest, and she declined to speak about any other aspects of the controversy.

But John Hammarley, who until recently served as Komen's senior communications adviser and who was charged with managing the public-relations aspects of Komen's Planned Parenthood grant, said that Williams believed she could not honorably serve in her position once Komen had caved to pressure from the anti-abortion right. "Mollie is one of the most highly respected and ethical people inside the organization, and she felt she couldn't continue under these conditions," Hammarley said. "The Komen board of directors are very politically savvy folks, and I think over time they thought if they gave in to the very aggressive propaganda machine of the anti-abortion groups, that the issue would go away. It seemed very shortsighted to me." [...]

Komen officials have denied that the decision has had anything to do with external pressure. In an internal Komen memorandum I obtained titled "Updated Granting Criteria/Reactive Statement and Talking Points," distributed in December, Komen officials deny to their employees that politics had anything to do with the decision. The memo, written as a Q&A, reads in part:

Q(uestion) 7: Is Komen giving into pressure from the Catholic Church/anti-abortion groups/the political right in making this change?

A(nswer) 7: Komen's decision to fund ANY grant is based on our mission priorities, a thorough community assessment, and strict eligibility and performance standards. Our granting criteria reflect our dedication to our mission and our consistent effort to invest our donors' dollars responsibly in support of our efforts to end breast cancer.

Q8: Planned Parenthood provides health services in many of the nation's poorest communities. How does your new policy align with your mission of serving women who lack resources to pay for important breast health services?

A8: Susan G. Komen is deeply committed to providing breast health services to women throughout the U.S. It is our belief that where a woman lives should not determine whether she lives. Komen provided funds for 700,000 breast screenings last year alone, and provided financial and social support to another 100,000 women, as part of our $93 million investment in education, public health outreach and service to vulnerable women last year alone. That work will continue. We believe these new standards will further enhance the integrity of our granting process and strengthen our overall community health program.

[... After discussion of a dubious purported "under investigation" policy device Komen intended to deploy] (Please read this Atlantic piece by Linda Hirshman for more on the dangerous politics of this decision.) The whole episode is troubling, and quite sad, because it will inevitably affect Komen's ability to do its work, which is of paramount importance to the cause of women's health.

Update: Mollie Williams, the Komen official who resigned to protest the organization's decision to defund Planned Parenthood, just sent me this statement, which I am reprinting in full:

Thank you for contacting me. As a public health professional, I must honor the confidentiality of my former employer, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and for this reason, I 'm not responding to questions about Komen's decision to no longer fund Planned Parenthood.

However, anyone who knows me personally would tell you that I am an advocate for women's health. I have dedicated my career to fighting for the rights of the marginalized and underserved. And I believe it would be a mistake for any organization to bow to political pressure and compromise its mission.

I have deep admiration for Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the millions of women who benefit from Komen's work. It was an honor to oversee and expand their public health efforts during my six years there. At the same time, I respect the work of Planned Parenthood, including their lifesaving efforts to detect cancer in its earliest stages.

The divide between these two very important organizations saddens me. I am hopeful their passionate and courageous leaders, Nancy Brinker and Cecile Richards, can swiftly resolve this conflict in a manner that benefits the women they both serve.

Links are within the original.

This was schemed out over time, the bogus excuse and all, and the board had to know of planning, unless the board was grossly negligent. The board's backing away now may, therefore, be little but an intervening dilatory step in an ongoing intent to stifle Komen support of the worthwhile anti-cancer work of organizations that disagree with the choice-hating segment of people within Komen.

Should that be at all apparent in the future, those folks valuing choice and liberty within family reproductive planning should cut off any and every penny they'd otherwise give to Komen.

On the other hand, if a lesson's been truly learned, Komen is well motivated in its main mission, to lessen the risk to women of breast cancer's ravages.

So, cut Komen slack, but keep it on a very, very, very, VERY short leash. And hammer those folks hard if they again step at all out of line to again do something divisive and harmful to the women's health movement.

Axing Handel promptly and without ceremony, would be a promising second step toward restoring credibility; the first step having been making a wise and hasty retreat from that which caused a hurricane of controversy, disbelief, and disdain. But there is an even better step available. Axing Handel with ceremony:

Handel has not stepped forward yet to say, "I instigated it, my confederates were ...", but two sources (here and here) quote the same prior statement she made about Planned Parenthood and funding which are strong, as circumstantial evidence where we await a denial and explanation, or Handel owning up to things, one or the other. The Komen board just, saying, yin today, yang tomorrow, does not cut it without putting Handel in the spotlight to publicly explain herself.  Short of putting Handel into the public spotlight that way, Komen has a credibility gap a mile wide -- they could just simply sit in the weeds and wait for time to pass. They have to move affirmatively to explain themselves, for the benefit of the entire public, never mind fence-mending with Planned Parenthood, an organization that necessarily has grown a thick skin and can be patient but vigilant.