Komen's apology a PR gimmick?

Not all abortion advocates are excited about Komen's apology.

The Susan G. Komen Foundation released a statement moments ago that many are greeting as a reversal of their decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood. On Twitter, the Breaking News feed called it a “pledge to continue funding Planned Parenthood,” while Glenn Greenwald called it “an amazing, Internet-driven victory.”

But it’s not.

The new statement does not pledge Komen to reverse its funding decision, and it does not promise Planned Parenthood any new funding....

Komen’s statement that Planned Parenthood will be “eligible” for new grants is a new development, but it commits Komen to nothing. There’s no reversal of the funding cutoff here, and no promise to reinstate Planned Parenthood funding.

This isn’t a victory. Not yet.

Hmmmmm......

Maybe Komen still intends to choose other organizations (like ones that actually provide mammogram) for grants over Planned Parenthood and figures the individual denial of grants on an affiliate level will cause less of a media firestorm than the one they're currently in. Will local PP affiliates make a huge deal anytime they don't get an applied for Komen grant?

We'll wait and see, I guess.

Life Links 2/3/12

Mitt Romney writes on the Obama administration attack on religious liberty.

Liberals and conservatives have made common cause to defend the rights of religious minorities in the past. But somehow, today, when it comes to the agenda of the left-wing of the Democratic Party—those who brought us abortion on demand and who fight against the teaching of abstinence education in our children's schools—their devotion to religious freedom goes out the window. They would force Catholics and others who have beliefs rooted in their faith to sacrifice the teachings of their faith to the mandate of federal bureaucrats.

What else would you expect from the mayor of the abortion capital of the United States?

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is pledging up to $250,000 to Planned Parenthood to offset funds that were cut by the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast cancer foundation.

Mayoral spokeswoman Samantha Levine said Thursday the billionaire mayor has promised to match future donations to Planned Parenthood up to $250,000.

A couple is Missouri discovered the bodies of 2 children (one 20 weeks gestation, another 28 weeks) which were persevered in jars for around 70 years.

Breaking: Komen reverses self?

The Dallas Morning News has posted the following statement from Komen CEO Nancy Brinker and their Board of Directors:

We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women's lives.

The events of this week have been deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen. We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not.

Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.

Our only goal for our granting process is to support women and families in the fight against breast cancer. Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has no place in our grant process. We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.

It is our hope and we believe it is time for everyone involved to pause, slow down and reflect on how grants can most effectively and directly be administered without controversies that hurt the cause of women. We urge everyone who has participated in this conversation across the country over the last few days to help us move past this issue. We do not want our mission marred or affected by politics - anyone's politics.

Starting this afternoon, we will have calls with our network and key supporters to refocus our attention on our mission and get back to doing our work. We ask for the public's understanding and patience as we gather our Komen affiliates from around the country to determine how to move forward in the best interests of the women and people we serve.

We extend our deepest thanks for the outpouring of support we have received from so many in the past few days and we sincerely hope that these changes will be welcomed by those who have expressed their concern.

Sadly, they've caved to bullies about the investigations but it appears from some of Brinker recent public statements that Komen wants to move away from funding mammogram middlemen like Planned Parenthood and provide the grants directly to outfits which actually perform mammograms.

Life Links Planned Parenthood/Komen edition

The Weekly Standard's John McCormack makes a good point.

But why does Planned Parenthood feel entitled to a private charity's donations, especially considering the fact that Planned Parenthood's president falsely claims on national television that the group provides mammograms? Isn't Komen free to give its money to organizations that do more than provide mammogram "referrals" and breast cancer screenings?

Who says prolife grassroots boycotts efforts don't work? Not people talking to the Atlantic's Jeffrey Golberg.

Hammarley explained that the Planned Parenthood issue had vexed Komen for some time. "About a year ago, a small group of people got together inside the organization to talk about what the options were, what would be the ramifications of staying the course, or of telling our affiliates they can't fund Planned Parenthood, or something in-between."
.......
He called the controversy over Planned Parenthood funding "a burr in the saddle of Komen, but it withstood the issue for years and years."

Mollie Hemingway notes how the media finally noticed the connection between Planned Parenthood and Komen after Komen cuts off grants.

Turn itself into? Turn itself into? Help me out here. Funding a group that terminates 330,000 pregnancies a year is not controversial but deciding not to fund that same group is? In what world? It's important to note that Planned Parenthood doesn't just do abortions. But many of the other things they do — teaching kids about sex through a text-chat program, receiving hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, spending high sums on fundraising and public policy to fight political opponents, selling or otherwise distributing contraception and abortifacients — are also controversial. Giving a woman a slip of paper to get a mammogram somewhere else is not controversial, unless by the standard that it's not sufficient work for scarce breast cancer dollars, but you have to put the controversy in context.

Planned Parenthood's Poor PR Strategy

Why are Planned Parenthood and the troops throwing such an enormous hissing fit over less than a $1 million dollars a year for an organization which rakes in $1 billion a year? That's less than 1/10 of 1% of Planned Parenthood's annual income and some pro-choice bloggers are acting like this is the end of the world.

I don't remember anywhere near this much wailing and gnashing of teeth over various state initiatives to defund Planned Parenthood which had much more money at stake. Planned Parenthood closed clinics in various states because it lost some of those funds. No clinic is going to close because of this. Yet this was the leading story at 11:00 p.m. last night for my local CBS affiliate despite Komen not providing any funds to Michigan Planned Parenthood affiliate in the last year.

Part of the strategy is obviously to raise money from the hardcore PP supporters. That's obvious. It's another fundraising appeal. They did the same thing when Indiana moved to defund them and PP acted like they needed donations to keep offices open. So they've had a short term increase in donations.

But the downside is that PP is again embroiling itself in controversy and alerting anyone who is listening that they are under a Congressional investigation. That's bad PR and flat-out stupid. Before this, only your dedicated prolifers knew and remembered Planned Parenthood was under Congressional investigation.

Also, why would any organization with a shred of common sense want to give money to Planned Parenthood in the future when they know that if they ever decide severe ties with them, PP will go nuts. Long term this is going to hurt Planned Parenthood's grant getting ability.

Their short term fundraising will never eclipse the future losses from acting this way towards an organization they used to have a friendly relationship with. If I was a Planned Parenthood board member I'd be looking to axe Ms. Richards and whoever came up with this "strategy."

National Right to Life: Republican presidential candidates are prolife

Carol Tobias, President of the National Right to Life Committee, has a blog post noting that the remaining Republican presidential candidates are prolife.

We are fortunate that all of the Republican candidates running for president are pro-life: former Speaker Newt Gingrich, Rep. Ron Paul, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum.

These candidates all support the reversal of Roe v. Wade; they all oppose using tax dollars to pay for abortion; they all oppose giving tax dollars to organizations (like Planned Parenthood) that perform abortions; and they all have stated emphatically that they would repeal “ObamaCare,” the so-called Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act that will provide for funding for health plans that pay for abortion on demand and will lead to the rationing of lifesaving medical treatments.

Overheard: Taking down Obama's dismissal of conscience rights for Catholic institutions

Michael Gerson:

Obama's decision also reflects a certain view of liberalism. Classical liberalism was concerned with the freedom to hold and practice beliefs at odds with a public consensus. Modern liberalism uses the power of the state to impose liberal values on institutions it regards as backward. It is the difference between pluralism and anti-­clericalism.

Megan McCardle simply eviscerates Kevin Drum's thoughtlessness.

I've seen several versions of Kevin's complaint on the interwebs, and everyone makes it seems to assume that we're doing the Catholic Church a big old favor by allowing them to provide health care and other social services to a needy public. Why, we're really coddling them, and it's about time they started acting a little grateful for everything we've done for them!

These people seem to be living in an alternate universe that I don't have access to, where there's a positive glut of secular organizations who are just dying to provide top-notch care for the sick, the poor, and the dispossessed.

Breaking: Komen Foundation stops grants to Planned Parenthood

Komen says the Congressional investigation is the reason. From FOX News:

The nation's leading breast-cancer charity, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, is halting its partnerships with Planned Parenthood affiliates — creating a bitter rift, linked to the abortion debate, between two iconic organizations that have assisted millions of women.

The change will mean a cutoff of hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants, mainly for breast exams.

Planned Parenthood says the move results from Komen bowing to pressure from anti-abortion activists. Komen says the key reason is that Planned Parenthood is under investigation in Congress — a probe launched by a conservative Republican who was urged to act by anti-abortion groups......

Komen, while not publicly announcing its decision to halt the grants, has conveyed the news to its 100-plus U.S. affiliates. Richards said she was informed via a phone call from Komen's president, Elizabeth Thompson, in December.

"It was incredibly surprising," Richards said. "It wasn't even a conversation — it was an announcement."

Richards subsequently sent a letter to Komen's top leaders — CEO Nancy Brinker and board chairman Dr. LaSalle D. Leffall, Jr. — requesting a meeting with the board and asserting that Komen had misrepresented Planned Parenthood's funding-eligibility status in some states.

According to Planned Parenthood, the Komen leaders replied to Richards with a brief letter ignoring the request for a meeting, defending the new grant criteria, and adding, "We understand the disappointment of any organization that is affected by these policy and strategy updates."

Life Links 1/31/12

Abortionist Steven Brigham's defense for his New Jersey to Maryland abortion caravan and the killing of unborn children past the age of viability? Maryland can't charge me because I killed the fetuses while in New Jersey.

His attorneys argued in a motion filed last week that the arrangement protects him from criminal prosecution in Maryland because Brigham administered drugs that killed the fetuses while the patients were in New Jersey. He then extracted the fetuses at his clinic in Elkton, Md.

In case you thought Canadian abortion advocate Joyce Arthur was anything other than either a liar or an ignoramus, here's evidence that she has trouble getting her facts straight.

In the United States, where fetuses do have legal personhood rights in at least 38 states (mostly through "fetal homicide" laws supposedly aimed at third parties who assault pregnant women), the laws are used primarily to prosecute pregnant women for drug or alcohol abuse, refusing a caesarean, or even experiencing a stillbirth. These unjust and cruel prosecutions tend to scare pregnant women away from prenatal care or even push them to have an abortion. They also turn pregnant women into third-class citizens whose rights are subordinate to those of their fetus.

There's a reason she provides no evidence for this ridiculous assertion, especially considering a number of the laws in question expressly exempt pregnant women.

There's also this great tidbit which highlights why you won't see Arthur agree to debate abortion:

To come back to Woodworth's challenge about whether the fetus is human, he completely misses the point because he's confusing the medical/biological aspects of "what is a human being" with the legal/social aspects of personhood. The biological status of the fetus is irrelevant since women need and have abortions anyway.

You silly thing, who cares if the unborn are human beings? Women need abortions.


The Raw Story has a longer video of the Occupy Pro-Choice protesters who interrupted a prolife event during the March for Life. Who signs up to continuously repeat lame decades-old chants?

Life Links 1/30/12

Jill Filipovic is promoting the meme that won't die.

The United States has one of the highest abortion rates in the developed world — that is in large part because of lack of birth control access

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. There are various reasons the United States' abortion rate is higher than some other nations in the developed world. "Lack of access to birth control" is not one of them.

Noticeably absent from Filipovic's pronouncement is any evidence for it. Typical.


The New York Times publishes an article from the Texas Tribune on the state's new ultrasound law. Here's a boo-hoo part about the poor abortionists and the logistics nightmare it creates for traveling abortionists:

For the clinics, however, it has been a bureaucratic nightmare. Now the physician performing the abortion — not an ultrasound technician, for example, or a secondary doctor — must conduct the sonogram on a separate day, a scheduling struggle when doctors providing elective abortions are in short supply and rotate between clinics.

“They’ve had to set aside a whole other day doing ultrasounds, visits that in most parts of medicine would be dedicated to people with less training than a physician,” Ms. Hagstrom Miller said. “The effect on their travel schedule, on their reimbursement, on patients’ access to them has been tremendous.”

Lawyer Gloria Allred is apparently contacting television stations which are planning on airing Randall Terry's Super Bowl ads and asking them for time to appear on the stations and react to the ad and "express the pro-choice right to safe and legal abortion position." I don't know if the stations should allow someone who can't spell the name of her country properly ("United Sates") the time of day.


Newt Gingrich has announced he would ban all embryonic stem cell research and create a commission to study the ethics of in-vitro fertilization if elected president.

Life Links 1/27/12

The Michigan Daily has an insightful piece by Cassie Balfour, a pro-choice student, who recently took the time to attend a meeting of the university's prolife student group.

It's pretty easy to be pro-choice at the University. I may have been raised in the religious west side of the state, but I grew up in East Quad, where being pro-choice is as ubiquitous as the Bob Marley posters pasted on dorm room walls.

It's easy to get trapped in an echo chamber when you think the Truth belongs to your side. But even if we can't agree, we can occasionally step across the protest line, stop the chanting, and listen.

A district judge has denied a Justice Department attempt to stop Colorado-based sidewalk counselor Kenneth Scott from talking to drivers as they enter Denver's Planned Parenthood.


Katrina Fernandez writes about beauty in the prolife movement.

I will never forget the one woman I met on Monday. She was there wearing an "I had an abortion" t-shirt. She said her abortion was 26 years ago and it was the best thing she'd ever done. Can you image living as long as she has and the only grand achievement she can claim for herself was having an abortion two and half decades ago?

Overheard: Student for Life of America's Kristan Hawkins in an interview at National Review Online.

You know, I saw two bumper stickers on a car the other day, and it still frustrates me when I think of it: One side of the car had a "You Can't Be Catholic and Pro-Choice" bumper sticker, and the other side had an "Obama 2012" bumper sticker. Can you say disconnect?

Life Links 1/26/12

The Peoria Journal Star has an article on National Health Care Services abortion clinic in Peoria, Illinois, which was found in violation of "dozens" of state rules (22 pages worth of deficiencies) after being inspected for the first time in over a decade.

Since the inspection, National Health Services has instituted a number of changes, including rewriting charts to indicate physicians reviewed patient medical histories and physical exams; renewing and updating files on physicians' credentials and hospital privileges; and training or re-training staff on pre- and post-operative emergency procedures. Additionally, licensed practical nurses will no longer administer intravenous medications and no LPNs or registered nurses will perform duties beyond their scope of practice. A maintenance log has been established to document regular equipment sterilization and all medications and narcotics will be locked away at all times.

The clinic spent about $10,000 to meet requirements of a separate architectural inspection. Almost $4,000 of the amount went to replacing wooden doors of two storage rooms with fireproof doors, Van Duyn said.

Abortions will resume at a Planned Parenthood in Columbia, Missouri after the clinic found a new abortionist.


An abortion clinic in Australia will stop performing abortions past 24 weeks. The clinic previously performed post 24-week abortions on women with "psychosocial reasons" including women who were "suffering mental health problems, have had a catastrophic change in their circumstances or have experienced difficulty accessing abortion services earlier."


Peter Heck points out how many pro-choicers insert emotion into the abortion debate in place of logic and notes how pro-choice political candidates rarely have to face emotional questions based on personal scenarios.

Or compare apples to apples and envision Obama being quizzed by Piers Morgan: "So if you believe that partial-birth abortion is a legitimate medical procedure that violates no moral law, would you be willing to inject the saline into your own daughter's womb to burn your grandchild alive?" Such outrageously aggressive and offensively personal questioning would have Morgan looking for work within a week.

The Center for Reproductive Rights has asked for a rehearing of Texas' ultrasound law in front of the entire 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.


The New York Daily News has the story of a woman who was misdiagnosed with an ectopic pregnancy, given one of the drugs used in chemical abortions, discovered her child was actually in her uterus and decided to give birth despite the possibility of birth defects. Despite being born with some rather serious birth defects, her daughter is "surprisingly healthy."

A lack of access to contraceptives is not a major reason why teens get pregnant

A new government study pokes another large hole in the "we need more access to birth control to dramatically reduce unplanned pregnancies" meme. Here's an MSNBC article on the study:

A new government study suggests a lot of teenage girls are clueless about their chances of getting pregnant.

In a survey of thousands of teenage mothers who had unintended pregnancies, about a third said they didn't use birth control because they didn't believe they could get pregnant......

The researchers interviewed nearly 5,000 teenage girls in 19 states who gave birth after unplanned pregnancies in 2004 through 2008. The survey was done through mailed questionnaires with telephone follow-up.

About half of the girls in the survey said they were not using any birth control when they got pregnant. That's higher than surveys of teens in general, which have found that fewer than 20 percent said they didn't use contraception the last time they had sex......

Only 13 percent said they didn't use birth control because they had trouble getting it.

Another finding: Nearly a quarter of the teen moms said they did not use contraception because their partner did not want them to.

Table 1 of the study clearly shows that a number of different reasons led teenagers not to use birth control and not having access isn't in the top 3. Interestingly, the 13% of teens not using contraceptives who say they had trouble getting them mirrors the 12% number found in the Guttmacher Institute's 2001 research of all reproductive-aged women who didn't use contraceptives.

Will these findings finally lead Planned Parenthood, AGI, etc. to stop blathering on endlessly about the desperate need for more access to contraceptives?

I wouldn't bet on it.

Life Links 1/24/12

Here's the Washington Post's coverage of the March for Life 2012.


The Salt Lake Tribune has a long two-part profile article on embattled abortionist Nicola Riley, who has been charged with murder for her role in late-term abortions in Maryland. The story shows how Riley's financial troubles led her to inquire about aborting children on the east coast and led to her association with infamous abortionist Steven Brigham. The second part details the botched abortion which led to charges against Riley and Brigham and how Riley's numerous lies about her past prison term caught up with her.


At the LTI blog, Jay Watts dismantles Debra Haffner's assertion-filled, argument-free piece attempting to make a religious case for legalized abortion.

What always gets me about pieces like Haffner's is when they equate "respecting women's moral agency" with believing that every decision a woman makes is morally right.


A utility worker in Fort Wayne found the remains of an unborn child while cleaning a pump station screen. The age of the child has yet to be determined. The article states between 10 and 25 weeks.

Embryonic stem cell success? Well, we're not really sure.....

The scientists at ACT have gotten the Lancet to publish a paper noting that after 4 months, two patients with eye conditions who received injections of cells derived from human embryonic stem cells have not had an adverse effects and have shown limited improvement. However, the paper notes that the scientists don't know what led to the improvement.

Similarly, we are uncertain at this point whether any of the visual gains we have recorded were due to the transplanted cells, the use of immunosuppressive drugs, or a placebo effect.

Amazingly, the New York Times has a (dare I say it?) somewhat evenhanded piece in their business section (maybe that's why) regarding the study. The article notes ACT's history of using overstatements in press releases to raise funds, the unusualness of publishing results on so few patients so quickly, the lack of a control group and the reality that the implanted cells might not have actually done anything.

More on Illinois' abortion clinic inspections

The Daily Herald has more from the Associated Press' research into Illinois' attempt to start inspecting abortion clinics again after years of neglect. Most notable is the results of their inspection of the Women's Aid Clinic in Lincolnwood, its closure and the insane reaction of Larissa Rowansky, the abortion clinic's co-owner.

One of those facilities — the Women's Aid Clinic in Lincolnwood — closed when the owner decided to surrender its license rather than pay a $36,000 fine or endure an expensive legal fight with the state. The fine was for violations including the clinic's failure to perform CPR on a patient who died after a procedure. Its owner told the AP her clinic was safe and she felt victimized by the surprise inspection after 15 years....

Larissa Rowansky, a co-owner of the Women's Aid Clinic in Lincolnwood, said her clinic helped women and provided the best care that a professional clinic could provide.

But Illinois inspection reports detail citations for practices such as frozen TV dinners stored in a biohazard lab refrigerator that also held placental or fetal tissue. The clinic's dusty equipment, lack of a supervising registered nurse and failure to perform CPR on a patient who later died also drew citations.

Rowansky said that patient didn't need CPR because she was speaking to emergency workers when she was taken to a hospital after her abortion. The patient "lied about her condition," Rowansky added, saying the woman had bronchial pneumonia and was too ill to have an abortion.

The other violations uncovered by the state inspectors were technicalities, Rowansky said.

"It was unfair," she said of the state's inspection last year, the first in 15 years.

A separate inspection of the building resulted in more citations for fire hazards. Fixing the problems and paying the fine would have cost more than a year's revenue, Rowansky said.

"I tried to help women to get legal abortions," she said. "If someone wants to work against that, there's nothing I can do."

Life Links 1/23/12

The smallest surviving child born in California is going home. Melinda Guido weigh a little more than ½ a pound at birth.

She was born four months premature on Aug. 30 and weighed just more than 9 ounces, making her the second smallest in the United States and one of the world's smallest surviving babies.

Melinda was so tiny she could fit into the palm of her doctor's hand.

Doctors say the baby now weighs 4.5 pounds and has progressed enough to be discharged.

Overhead - Mark Judge on Washington Post writer Dana Milbank's observations about the March for Life:

What makes this so awful is not that Milbank is a liberal. It's the rote belching up of cliches in place of thought, research, or contemplation. It's the making of an idiotic assertion about financial motivation, followed the inability to follow a more interesting assertion he stumbles over to an interesting place. It's the childish impulse, not to mention the moral sclerosis, of the sarcastic quotes around "conscience clause."

Scott Klusendorf and Jay Watts defend incremental prolife legislation.


Casey Martinson, the Director of Public Affairs for Planned Parenthood of the Southern Finger Lakes (PPSFL), writes that the sky is falling on Roe v. Wade.

I'm sorry to say that the sky is falling on Roe v Wade. It's been falling incrementally for the past four decades, and it fell further, faster, in 2011 than in any year before. According to the Guttmacher Institute, state legislatures passed 94 new laws restricting abortion in 2012. Not only is that a new record, but it shatters the previous record of 34 new laws passed in 2005 by a lot.

Interestingly, the director of public affairs doesn't know how old Roe v. Wade is.

So the alarm that defenders of reproductive rights have been sounding at a higher and higher volume is serious business. As we approach the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we have an opportune moment to bring these concerns into focus against the never-ending blur of our modern news cycle. Anti-choice extremists – a fair word for people who equate not just abortion but birth control pills with murder – are gearing up to make their own hay on this issue, and after 38 years of losing ground, pro-choice advocates need maximum effort to turn things around.

Unsurprisingly, avid pro-choicers who spurn debate have no problem interrupting a prolife event at the March for Life to mindlessly spout chants. Jennie Stone has the video and summary.

ProLifeCon live streaming

Don't miss the live stream of ProLifeCon at the Family Research Council's website.

Illinois inspecting abortion clinics again

Two separate Associated Press articles on local Illinois television stations inform readers that in 2011 the state of Illinois started to inspect abortion clinics after years of neglect.

An analysis of state documents by The Associated Press finds the state is catching up with a backlog of neglected inspections, but a few clinics still haven't been checked in more than a decade.

The renewed oversight last year led to the permanent closure of a clinic in Rockford earlier this month, following the closing of a second clinic in suburban Chicago last October.

State officials say gruesome revelations about a Philadelphia facility spurred the renewed inspections.

Another article lists the number of years since various clinics had been investigated.