Komen Foundation offers pink handgun to promote Br

**evanovitch** · 02-07-2012, 09:14 PM

Pink Stink: Komen Drops Planned Parenthood Support

Pink Stink: Komen Drops Planned Parenthood Support
Move comes after Bible spat, debate on breast-cancer activism.
Sarah Pulliam Bailey and Ted Olsen | posted 1/31/2012 04:13PM

Facing criticism and boycotts from pro-life groups, breast cancer charity Susan G. Komen for the Cure has dropped its partnership and financial support of Planned Parenthood and its affiliates, the Associated Press reported today.

In its February issue, arriving in mailboxes now, Christianity Today examined the recent controversy over the partnership and LifeWay Christian Resources' decision to halt sales of its breast cancer awareness Bible. Some proceeds from the Bible sales were to be donated to Komen. (CT's earlier story is posted below.)

Komen spokeswoman Leslie Aun told the Associated Press that the recent controversy with Lifeway (the Southern Baptist Convention's publishing arm) was not the reason for the break with Planned Parenthood. Instead, she said, new organizational rules against grants to groups under governmental investigation came into play when U.S. Representative Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) launched an inquiry.

<span style="font-weight: bold">Planned Parenthood, which conducts breast exams but not mammograms, received more than $600,000 from Komen last year. </span>(One pro-life group put the number at $629,159. Planned Parenthood told the Associated Press that the grants were about $680,000.) Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards said the organization is "alarmed and saddened that the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation appears to have succumbed to political pressure."

Richards also indicated that "existing agreements or plans" between Komen and Planned Parenthood will continue, but that Komen Foundation officials have notified Planned Parenthood programs that they are ineligible for new grants.

While Komen officials have so far made no public statement about the decision, activists on both sides of the abortion fight are speculating on the involvement of Karen Handel, Komen's senior vice president of public policy, in the decision. Handel, the former secretary of state of Georgia, ran for governor in 2010. Part of her platform at the time was to eliminate state grants to Planned Parenthood. (LifeNews notes that Georgia Right to Life did not consider her sufficiently pro-life to win an endorsement.)

Pro-life groups praised the break between the organizations. "Obviously we applaud this move," said Melinda Delahoyde, president of Care Net. "Komen's mission is one that affects every woman, our mothers, our sisters, and our daughters, and it's a mission we fully endorse. It shouldn't be mixed with providing abortions."

Likewise, LifeWay Christian Resources president Thom Rainer said the publisher was grateful for the news. "As the husband of a breast cancer survivor, I am appreciative of Komen's legacy of fighting the ravages of breast cancer and am confident they will continue to do so," he said.

Rainer said the Here's Hope Breast Cancer Awareness Bible remains in the publisher's distribution center. "We are just beginning to discuss our next steps, including the possibility of re-engaging the partnership with Komen," he told Christianity Today. LifeWay's B&H arm had intitially planned for the Bible both to benefit Komen's breast cancer work (Komen would receive $1 for each Bible sold) while extending its Bibles into nontraditional outlets like Walmart. (The Bibles were not sold in LifeWay's stores.)

* * *
A campaign for pink faded after LifeWay Christian Resources halted sales of its breast cancer awareness Bible to major retailers. Proceeds were shared with Susan G. Komen for the Cure, which has donated funds to Planned Parenthood.

The Southern Baptist Convention's publishing arm pledged a minimum of $25,000 to Komen, including $1 from each pink Holman Christian Standard Bible sold. Komen, the nation's largest breast cancer organization, has sent funds to 19 Planned Parenthood programs for breast cancer screenings and health education.

LifeWay's proceeds were set up to support cancer programs with no dollars going to Planned Parenthood, said Andrea Rader, a spokesperson for Komen. The organization has more than 200 corporate partners, but LifeWay was the only one affiliated with a religious organization, she said.

"We made a mistake," LifeWay president Thom S. Rainer said in a statement. LifeWay will fulfill the agreement with Komen, said Marty King, a spokesperson for LifeWay, but it is asking retailers to take the Bibles off of shelves.

"There's nothing wrong with the Bibles," he said. "We just have no business being in even a perceived relationship with Planned Parenthood."

The Bibles sold from October to the middle of December before some pro-life websites highlighted the ties—ones pro-life leaders found too close for comfort.

Even if money from Komen only went to breast cancer screenings, pro-life leaders say any money going to Planned Parenthood helps fuel the organization.

"I am hopeful that [LifeWay's decision] will not squelch our hope to see breast cancer eradicated," said Melinda Delahoyde, president of Care Net. "At the same time, it's a good sign of awareness of where we don't want our money and support to go: the largest abortion provider in the country."

Komen's pink-ribbon campaign dominates breast cancer activism. But Dallas-based ministry leader June Hunt, who was diagnosed with cancer 10 years ago, believes Komen doesn't hold a monopoly on awareness. "Before I heard the 'C' word [cancer], I had no idea there were so many ways to reach out," said Hunt, author of Caring for a Loved One with Cancer. "There is so much help apart from Komen: ministries, books, resources."

"I'm afraid people will have a knee-jerk reaction and say, 'If I buy that pink bracelet, a child dies,'" said Sarah Thebarge, who has written for Christian publications about her breast cancer diagnosis at 27. "Instead of channeling [support] to a different place, people could use it as an excuse to not support research."

Publishers like Tyndale, Zondervan, and HarperOne have produced earlier variations on a pink Bible with a portion of proceeds going to groups that focus on patients. Donors tend to support either groups like Komen that focus on the big picture of eradicating breast cancer, or groups that provide counseling or financial support to patients, said Lynn Eib, author of When God and Cancer Meet.

"It's a question of where you want to put your money: in the forest or in the trees," she said. "They're both viable."

**evanovitch** · 02-07-2012, 09:17 PM

The Pink Ribbon and the Dollar Sign

The Pink Ribbon and the Dollar Sign
The wrong lessons to draw from the Komen-Planned Parenthood debacle.
Russell D. Moore | posted 2/03/2012 12:47PM

Editor's note: This is not today's only article on Komen and Planned Parenthood. In addition to our news report, you might also enjoy Albert Mohler's argument that there is "no neutral ground when it Comes to Planned Parenthood," Matthew Lee Anderson's examination of "The Politics of Breast Cancer," and Mollie Ziegler Hemingway's look at "The Komen Fiasco's Silver Lining."

The Pink Ribbon, for now anyway, is an emblem of the culture wars.

Today the Susan Komen Foundation for the Cure announced that it was caving to pressure from the Planned Parenthood Federation, reversing its decision not to fund Planned Parenthood in the screening of women for breast cancer.

This is an important victory for Planned Parenthood and the abortion rights lobby. First of all, the association with Komen is a key piece in Planned Parenthood's effort to present itself as a "women's health provider" rather than simply as an abortion provider. Beyond that, the surrender of the nation's leading breast cancer awareness group to this kind of political pressure proves the clout of Planned Parenthood and their allies.

Evangelical and Catholic Christians, and our pro-life allies of all faiths, might be tempted to draw some wrong conclusions from this tragic affair. After all our years of trumpeting opinion polls showing a "pro-life majority" in the United States, this demonstrates that, when it comes to money and power, the pro-choice forces aren't sustained simply by the penumbra and emanations of an old Supreme Court decision.

Some pro-life persons might wish that the Christian churches had as much influence in the public arena as Planned Parenthood, that we were able to mobilize as many callers and threaten as many boycotts. Some might see this as a sign that we need more money and respect. After all, if some Christian foundation had more financial firepower than Planned Parenthood, Komen might have stood firm.

In all of this, though, we can gain an opportunity to see what the abortion culture is all about: cash. Planned Parenthood and their allies use the thoroughly American language of freedom of choice and women's empowerment, but what's at stake, as seen here, are billions of dollars. That's why, despite their talk about adoption as a "choice," Planned Parenthood and others hardly ever lead women through an adoption process relative to how often they promise them the "fix" of a "terminated pregnancy." There's a profit motive involved in every abortion.

Christians shouldn't be surprised by any of this. Money and power, abstracted from the lordship of Christ, always lead to violence. Pharaoh ordered the execution of the Hebrew children because they threatened his position in "the 1 percent" of ancient Egypt. Herod carried out the same decree because he wanted to protect his kingship, a kingship that carried with it the financial support of the Roman Empire.

No one, Jesus told us, can serve both God and Mammon. In saying this, Jesus personalized money in a disturbing way. When capital becomes God it, somehow, is no longer something, but someone. The demonic force of rapaciousness so distorts the soul that, when it's threatened, someone is going to die.

The answer for those of us who cherish the lives of women and their children, regardless of stage of development, isn't to long to compete with Planned Parenthood in the influence that comes with massive amounts of wealth. It's instead to see, first of all, how our own captivity to Mammon devolves us in the same way.

After all, Planned Parenthood is making a killing, yes, but their customers aren't all secularists. In any given clinic, there sits a young woman with a Rosary in her pocket, or AWANA Bible verses memorized in her brain. Waiting outside those clinics, there's often a Southern Baptist deacon or a Presbyterian elder, who assuages his conscience by thinking he or his girlfriend or his daughter can't "afford" a baby right now.

After a generation of Christian churches emphasizing financial prosperity and the American dream, is it any wonder that when being pro-life moves beyond voting for candidates and toward dealing with an unwanted pregnancy, so many of our own slip out into the darkness of the nearest large city with a guilty conscience and an envelope full of cash?

We don't need a Christian foundation to compete with the merchants of death. We don't need one more coalition with enough signatures to counter the threatened boycotts of the abortion rights peddlers. And we sure don't need to sell bumper stickers with a line drawn through a pink ribbon.

What we need, first of all, are churches who recognize that this isn't all that surprising. Mammon is a jealous god, and he's armed to the teeth. We need to create the kind of counter-culture that constantly shines the light of Christ wherever these false gods exist in our own affections. And then we need to demonstrate what it means to believe that a person's life consists in more than the abundance of his possessions.

Let's stop highlighting how God "blesses" the millionaire who tithes. Let's stop trumpeting the celebrity football players and beauty queens as evidence of God's blessing. Let's show that God has blessed us in a Christ who never had a successful career or a balanced bank account, but who was blessed by God with life, and with children that no one can number, from every tribe, tongue, nation, and language.

Planned Parenthood has won this one. They spent a lot of money, and they'll make a lot of money. And they'll do so off the shredded corpses of children and the raped consciences of women. If Jesus' kingdom were of this world, we'd be fundraising to keep up with them.

But what we have is greater than that. We have a word that tells a pregnant young woman that we believe her Down Syndrome baby is a gift, not a health care burden. And we can offer the kind of gospel that cleanses the conscience and offers what outlasts money and power: life and that to the uttermost.

Let's work to legally protect women and children. And let's grieve that old Mammon has won the day, again. But let's not grieve like the pagans who have no hope. When it comes to the struggle for life, the color of victory isn't pink like a ribbon. It's red like a cross.

Russell D. Moore is the dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He blogs at "Moore to the Point," www.russellmoore.com

Komen Foundation offers pink handgun to promote Br

Komen Foundation offers pink handgun to promote Br

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