2012-02-03-perspective"Celebrating life, love and hope"?

In Friday's Digest we ran an item about the Susan Komen Foundation, the nation's largest breast cancer fundraising organization. Komen events do a lot of good, particularly for the spirits of women and families who have suffered the consequences of breast cancer. All of us know women who have courageously fought this battle, and too many who have lost.

We wrote about Komen because on Monday, just after Sanctity of Life Sunday and large pro-life celebrations around the nation, Komen's board decided that Komen funds would no longer be allocated for grants to Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), the nation's largest abortion syndicate. This was a wise decision on the part of the Komen board, because those who support Komen do not expect funds to be diverted to Planned Parenthood.

Komen had argued that the PPFA funds were "exclusively for breast exams," but Komen could support other public health organizations, which do not provide abortions in the next room. After all, if individuals want to support PPFA, they can do so directly.

On Tuesday, Komen opted out of the grants to avoid any further controversy regarding their support for abortion providers.

On Thursday, Komen founder Nancy Brinker announced, "Our donations are up 100 percent in the past two days." In fact, Komen raised more than $1 million in the 24 hours after announcing they were cutting off PPFA. On the other hand, PPFA, which protested the cuts, raised $400,000 in the same 24-hour period.

However, on Friday afternoon, after 22 pro-abortion Senate Demo-Gogues issued a letter of protest, Komen announce they were reversing their reversed decision, and restoring funding to PPFA.

We believe Komen's decision to defund PPFA created such a media sensation that millions of Komen supporters, for the first time, became aware that Komen had previously provided grants to abortion clinics. For pro-abortion advocates, this created mass hysteria. For pro-life advocates, this was a relief.

Komen's reversed reversal has now created such a media stir that if donors did not hear about the reversal earlier this week, they now know this: Komen is providing grants to abortion clinics.

For pro-abortion Komen supporters, this reversal is a victory that will probably not increase their giving. However, now that many pro-life supporters of Komen have just learned for the first time that the organization uses some of their funds to support abortion mills, this may well impact Komen's "profit's" long term.

For the record, Komen raises hundreds of millions of dollars "for the Cure," but, according to its Form 990, actually spends more on administrative and fundraising costs than cancer research. (Komen executives are paid salaries well into six figures -- and their president is paid more than $500,000.) As for PPFA, it began as the American Birth Control League, founded by Margaret Sanger, an early proponent of eugenics. Sanger characterized the poor as "human weeds, reckless breeders, spawning ... human beings who never should have been born." She wrote, "The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it." Though her focus was to prevent the growth of "inferior races," she wrote, "We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." Caveat Emptor!