TOWN HALL: No mammograms at Planned Parenthood (poll)

Grants from the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation are supposed to save women with breast cancer. No dollar should be wasted by this charity on anything outside of that mission. Society doesn’t need to lose another wife, mother, daughter, sister or friend to breast cancer.

In an effort to use its precious capital wisely, the foundation chose to stop funding Planned Parenthood — an organization that’s under investigation by Congress on an array of charges involving impropriety and violations of law. Among other concerns, sting operations have revealed Planned Parenthood apparently ignoring laws that require health care providers to report evidence of statutory rape.

Komen officials decided to discontinue their gifts to Planned Parenthood over concerns about what women were not getting, from the nation’s largest abortion provider.

Congress contemplated cutting off funds to Planned Parenthood in 2011. The organization’s national president, Cecile Richards, went on TV and said: “What’s going to happen as a result of this is that this bill, if it ever becomes law, millions of women in this country are going to lose their health care access. Not to abortion services, to basic family planning. You know, mammograms.”

Problem is, Planned Parenthood does not do mammograms. At best, refers women to other organizations for early detection screenings.

After Richards told her fib on TV about the organization providing mammograms, a group called LiveActionFilms tried to schedule mammograms at dozens of Planned Parenthood facilities throughout the country. In all cases, clinic workers stated they did not provide mammograms and in most they had trouble making referrals.

“We don’t, um, deal with the — the health side of it so much. We’re mostly a surgical facility (meaning abortion provider),” a Planned Parenthood worker said, referring the caller to “our family health center” across town.

When the investigator dialed Planned Parenthood’s health center, the conversation went no better.

“I just talked to Samantha, I think at your Georgetown clinic and she said to talk to you guys about, um, services with mammograms — that you guys provide mammograms?”

Pause. “We don’t here,” the Planned Parenthood worker said.

Call after call went like this: “OK, well, unfortunately we do not offer, like, um, the mammogram.”

Listen to the calls at: http://bit.ly/eoHaup

Was Susan G. Komen foundation right to stop funding Planned Parenthood? Vote in poll to the right. Must vote to see results.

It is clear that Planned Parenthood is not in the business of screening for cancer or making good referrals.

“We have decided not to fund, wherever possible, pass-through grants,” said Komen founder and CEO Nancy Goodman Brinker, in explaining her organization’s decision to stop paying Planned Parenthood. “We were giving them money, they were sending women out for mammograms. What we would like to have are clinics where we can directly fund mammograms.”

Makes sense. A charity that’s devoted 100 percent to saving women from breast cancer should not donate to a much larger, better-funded organization that has no serious role in cancer detection. Unfortunately, they were bullied into continuing their “gifts.”

That's our view. What's yours? Please initiate or join in a Facebook discussion below, and vote in poll to the upper right.

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