Time For One Thing: A positive side effect

The risk of inheriting the gene that killed my mother had once frightened me into paralysis. But my relationship with my breast surgeon has helped me manage my fear.

By Joan Walsh

Topics:Breast cancer

Just by coincidence,
I usually see my breast surgeon in October, National Breast Cancer Awareness month, but I saw her early this year because she’s on maternity leave again. After my visit, I ran into a friend. When I told her where I was, she suddenly looked alarmed. “I didn’t
know you had breast … problems,” she said, concerned.

“I don’t!” I jumped to reassure her. Then I was suddenly
tongue-tied: So why do I have a breast surgeon? I see her two or three
times a year, and I think of her as part of my crew, like my therapist, my
hair stylist, the woman who does my nails. But she’s not exactly a yuppie
indulgence.

Five years ago a genetic counselor told me I was at “elevated risk”
for breast cancer. My mother died of it at 45; her mother had been struck
by the disease in her 40s but survived. Since both women developed breast cancer at a relatively young age, they likely had a
genetic problem that allowed a later “trigger” — such as diet, hormones, chemicals — to bring on the disease earlier
than in a woman without a genetic predisposition.

My own lifetime risk of breast cancer, based on epidemiological
studies, was estimated at one in four, compared to the “average” woman’s
risk of one in nine. I was left with a choice: preventive mastectomy,
extreme vigilance or denial.

I briefly opted for denial. The confusion over what to do was
paralyzing. Preventive mastectomy seemed barbaric. I like my breasts and I
didn’t want to lose them to a disease I may never get. Besides, surgery
can’t remove everything, and sometimes cancer shows up in the tiny bit of
breast tissue that’s left behind. That seemed just my luck — I’d lose my
breasts but wind up with cancer of the tissue around my collarbone.

The “extreme vigilance” option wasn’t terribly reassuring, either.
The news of my elevated risk coincided with a sudden surge in breast cancer
activism, as advocates began to protest the lack of progress on prevention,
detection and treatment of the disease. Suddenly, activists like Dr. Susan
Love were questioning the utility of mammograms for women under 50, whose
dense breast tissue makes it harder to spot a small tumor. Experts began
to debate whether annual mammograms saved lives or created a false sense
of security in younger women, causing them to neglect to examine their own
breasts.

Not that breast self-exam was a much better option, the advocates
noted: By the time a breast tumor is large enough to feel with your
fingers, it has often already spread. And with treatment options still
limited to “slash, burn and poison” — surgery, radiation and chemotherapy
– death rates were remaining high, despite earlier detection. I admired
the new activism, which was intended to goad the medical establishment into
action. But it also, for a time, intimidated women like me into not acting.

That’s when I met my breast surgeon. On our first visit, she
quizzed me about my family history of breast cancer — and about my
daughter, my writing and mixing motherhood with a career. Roughly my age,
she wanted to start a family, but worried about how it would mix with her
practice. Our conversation tacked back and forth between cancer research,
motherhood and men, and I walked away with a plan of action: She’d examine
me manually every four to six months, and I’d get a mammogram once a year.
Mammograms work for me: My breasts happen to be less dense than those of most women
my age, or as my radiology technician put it, “You have the breasts of a
55-year-old woman.” I wouldn’t have imagined thrilling to those words 10
years ago, but in this context they were the nicest thing anyone could say
about my breasts.

That was almost five years ago. In those years my surgeon has had
two babies; I’ve gotten divorced, changed jobs as well as boyfriends. We have a relationship. When we visit, she asks me for advice about
childbirth, child care and preschool. I ask her if I should think again
about preventive mastectomy (she says no), or worry about a tiny pimple on
my chest (she pronounced it “a big nothing”), or continue dating someone
who travels more than I do (she left that one up to me).

Her office calls when it’s time for my appointment. They call
again if I don’t call back. I feel too guilty to let much time pass
between visits, and I actually look forward to seeing her. She maintains
my sanity, and indulges my periodic paranoia. Once when I became convinced
that a small cyst below my left breast was more than “a big nothing,” she
squeezed me in at the end of her long day, removed it and sent it to
pathology just to reassure me. Of course, it was a big nothing. But I
didn’t have to wait weeks to get that confirmed.

Yet I still got tongue-tied when I tried to explain why I have a
breast surgeon. Sometimes I feel like it’s morbid to have a doctor ready
to treat a disease I may never have. On the other hand, breast cancer
already is my disease. Its assault on my mother, who had her mastectomy
when I was 12, shaped me profoundly. So did her culturally bred sense that
she had a shameful illness — both cancer and breasts were something you
whispered about — which kept us both from getting the emotional help we
needed. This society draws a cruel line between the well and the sick, and
the stigma of serious illness is part of its pain. I feel I know a little
of the terrain on the other side of the line now, and that helps me,
practically and psychologically.

My fear has become manageable. I’ve limited my worrying about
getting breast cancer to five minutes before my appointments. Then my
surgeon walks in, and we chat excitedly, maybe a little maniacally, the
whole time she examines my breasts. I keep up my end of the conversation
– my daughter, my writing, my boyfriend — while searching her face for
clues: Did she find anything? Am I all right? She helps me up off the
table and tells me I’m perfect. We finish up our conversation and make
plans for our next visit, like busy girlfriends penciling in their next
lunch date.

: Joan Walsh is Salon's editor at large. More Joan Walsh

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Komen scandal: Goodbye, Karen Handel

One week after the foundation's blunder, its scandal-plagued V.P. steps down

By Mary Elizabeth Williams

Karen Handel (Credit: AP/John Bazemore)

Topics:Susan G. Komen Foundation, Planned Parenthood, Breast cancer

It was perhaps inevitable. But it speaks volumes nonetheless. On Tuesday morning, the Susan G. Komen Foundation announced that its vice president for public policy, Karen Handel, was resigning.

It was the latest very public – and very bitter – turn in a story that has thrown the traditionally esteemed Komen foundation for one hell of a loop. Just one week ago, Planned Parenthood announced that Komen was halting its funding for the organization’s breast cancer screenings. The move, the Komen foundation insisted, was about “the charity’s newly adopted criteria barring grants to organizations that are under investigation by local, state or federal authorities” – itself a dubious smear on a respected women’s health organization. But it didn’t take long for critics to note that Handel, who was hired just last year, had run for governor of Georgia on a platform of conspicuously anti-Planned Parenthood rhetoric. In 2010, she declared “I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood,” and that she “strongly supports” laws prohibiting “the use of taxpayer funds for abortions or abortion-related services.” A lady like that in the driver’s seat of your organization just as you’re distancing yourself from Planned Parenthood looks like a whole more than a coincidence.

With a relentless social media nightmare and a surge of high-profile promises of financial support for Planned Parenthood on its hands, the Komen foundation had, by Friday, backed off, apologizing “to the American public for recent decisions” and vowing to “continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood.” Yet the shadow of its anti-Planned Parenthood bigwig loomed large, especially for an organization that insists it has no political agenda. So as a new campaign for Komen to oust Handel was picking up steam across Twitter and Facebook on Tuesday, she stepped down.

Her departure doesn’t appear to be that of a woman cowed by the events of the recent past. She says she has declined any severance package, and in her resignation letter, she says she is “deeply disappointed by the gross mischaracterizations of the strategy, its rationale, and my involvement in it” and that “neither the decision nor the changes themselves were based on anyone’s political beliefs or ideology.” Indeed, Handel could not possibly have gone rogue on this one and implemented the disastrous decision about Planned Parenthood all by her lonesome. But in a Huffington Post story Sunday, Laura Bassett reported that a Komen insider told her “Karen Handel was the prime instigator of this effort, and she herself personally came up with investigation criteria. She said, ‘If we just say it’s about investigations, we can defund Planned Parenthood and no one can blame us for being political.’”

For now, the matter seems at an end. A representative for Planned Parenthood referred Salon this Tuesday morning to the organization’s statement from last Friday and told us, “We have no plans to say anything further.” But in this crucial election year, the Komen mess and the departure of Handel send a powerful message — that when you screw around with screenings and services to women who might otherwise not afford them, it does not go unnoticed. You say it’s not political? It’s about women’s health and women’s bodies. It’s political as hell. And it will be in November.

: Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams

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Susan G. Komen’s priceless gift

A radical decision woke the country up to an alarming rightward drift, and gave new life to women’s health advocacy

By Rebecca Traister and Joan Walsh

Members of Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America and more than 20 other organizations hold a "Stand Up for Women's Health" rally in Washington (Credit: Joshua Roberts / Reuters)

Topics:Planned Parenthood, Breast cancer, Editor's Picks

The startling intensity that we saw this week in response to Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s decision to pull its grants from Planned Parenthood — an intensity that prompted the Komen foundation to reverse its decision today — may be the best thing that’s happened to the conversation about reproductive rights in this country for decades. It certainly should be.

Practically since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, reproductive rights activists have been left to play stilted defense against ideological opponents who grabbed the language of morality, life, love and family as their own, always deploying it with reference to the fetus. The rhetoric around reproductive rights, which has more recently begun to creep into arguments over contraception, has become suffocating in its emotional self-righteousness, but too muscular, too ubiquitous to effectively combat.

But the overreach by the Komen foundation, while surely intended to strike yet another blow on the side of antiabortion activism, succeeded instead in waking a powerful constituency — armed with precisely the language and emotional heft they’ve been lacking for too long.

That this week’s blow against Planned Parenthood came not directly from John Boehner’s House of Representatives – which, ever since taking power a year ago promising to focus on jobs, has manfully focused on the single task of attacking women’s reproductive rights – but instead from a popular, officially nonpartisan organization dedicated wholly to women’s healthcare somehow brought this argument into the open.

The response to Komen was surely so tinderbox explosive because it had been building with every politically theatrical investigation launched by Cliff Stearns and every grisly abortion scene enacted on the House floor by U.S. Rep. Chris Smith. But it was not just Washington wonkery, and was not ginned up or amplified by professional political cranks. It was the reflexive kick of a shin hit just below the knee, and the visceral anger spilled everywhere, from a Planned Parenthood Saved Me tumblr and onto Facebook, where people posted images of Komen’s pink ribbon cut in half. It poured from bank accounts, including that of New York Mayor and former Republican Michael Bloomberg.

It came from often dispassionate media figures like Andrea Mitchell, was tweeted by novelists like Judy Blume, Terry McMillan and William Gibson, actors Ellen Barkin and Martha Plimpton, politicos like Donna Brazile, Reps. Gwen Moore and Jackie Speiers, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and from 22 senators including Frank Lautenberg, Al Franken and Kirsten Gillibrand, who signed a letter urging Komen to reverse its decision. It came from callers to radio programs, announcing their intentions to drop out of Komen races, and from the American Association of University Women, which canceled a scheduled service event with Komen. In the three days after Komen’s announcement of its Planned Parenthood break, Planned Parenthood received more than $3 million in donations, said PPFA president Cecile Richards in a press call on Friday.

More than that, though: The starkly observable attack against something as crucial and basic as breast exams for poor women, as well as the fact that so many divergent voices were pulled into it, meant that the conversation was not about partisan politics; it was about women. For the first time in what feels like forever, passion and fury were being loudly, proudly given in a full-throated voice, on behalf of women – women as moral actors; women as citizens with rights, health, bodies, freedoms; women as people with families and economic concerns.

Taken together, these factors mark this as a watershed moment in the contemporary conversation about reproductive rights. This is a story in which we see the possibility of a turned tide, a new way to gauge how the public actually feels about women’s rights and health, and a new way to talk about it, as well. Because what we saw this week was big. It was mass. It was emotional. This was so different from the various polls activists on both sides of the abortion question are always throwing around, polls that depend so much on how a question is asked; polls that offer far less clarity than head-banging confusion about where America stands on the issue of reproductive heath. This was not a poll. This was America announcing that it cared about women’s health, and more specifically, that it cared about Planned Parenthood.

In many ways, the activism that forced Komen to backtrack was ignited by Boehner’s House Republicans a year ago, when they voted to cut off all funding to Planned Parenthood because it provides abortion services. This despite the fact that since 1976’s Hyde Amendment, no federal money has been able to be used to provide abortion services. The organization Republicans want to squash provides more than 800,000 women a year with breast exams, more than 4 million Americans with testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, and 2.5 million people with contraception, which prevents unintended pregnancy and thus abortion. But playing to what they must imagine is overriding public sentiment, Republicans have worked tirelessly to lodge the image of Planned Parenthood as an abortion factory deep in the American imagination.

A year ago, some of the anger at this strategy began to bubble over. In response to Smith’s description of a second trimester abortion, read on the House floor, Democratic U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier went to the House well and described her own painful second trimester abortion. “For you to stand on this floor and suggest that somehow this is a procedure that is either welcomed or done cavalierly or done without any thought, is preposterous,” Speier said, directing her comments at Smith. “Planned Parenthood has a right to operate. Planned Parenthood has a right to provide services for family planning. Planned Parenthood has a right to offer abortions. The last time I checked, abortions were legal in this country … I would suggest to you that it would serve us all very well if we moved on with this process and started focusing on creating jobs for the Americans who desperately want them.”

It was around this time that a viral “Thank You Planned Parenthood” meme cropped up online. With participants noting the instances in which they had relied on PPFA for birth control, breast exams, gynelogical care, and yes, abortions. Twitter, Facebook and blogs began to be dotted with “I stand with Planned Parenthood” emblems. Comedian Lizz Winstead kicked off a tour called “Planned Parenthood, I am here for you.”

But this recent wave of defense of Planned Parenthood has remained broad, ambient. The politics of the congressional witch hunt have been so labyrinthine, so convoluted, that it has been difficult to know how to effectively harness an angry response. When, last fall, Rep. Cliff Stearns launched an investigation into PPFA’s bookkeeping, the move was so needless, such a trumped-up piece of political stagecraft (since PPFA does receive federal funds, it must scrupulously account for every dime it spends, no special investigation required) that it was hard to even know how to make sense of it, let alone respond. This week, a caller to WNYC’s “Brian Lehrer Show” professed her belief that the Stearns investigation centered on whether Planned Parenthood was performing late-term abortions.

The demonization of Planned Parenthood should have awakened the country to the radicalism of the right, and how far it has pushed the political conversation. It’s been hard to measure the degree of the radicalism, so slowly and unceasingly has it crept across our consciousness and the political discourse. But it’s important to remember how mainstream Planned Parenthood used to be. It was the respectable, even Republican, advocate for women’s health, including reproductive services; the leaders of the National Abortion Rights Action League were the activist agitators. Sen. Prescott Bush, the father of President George H.W. Bush, served as treasurer of Planned Parenthood’s first national fundraising campaign. Richard Nixon signed the family planning legislation in 1970 that authorized its federal funding.

As a congressman, George Bush and his wife, Barbara, were reliable friends of the organization. Barry Goldwater’s wife, Betty, was a founding member of Arizona Planned Parenthood; President Gerald Ford’s wife, Betty, was a high-profile supporter of the group. More recently, Ann Romney, wife of the 2012 GOP presidential front-runner, donated $150 to Planned Parenthood in 1994. And when a Romney relative died of a botched abortion in 1963, the family asked that memorial donations go to Planned Parenthood.

But what happened this week was a clarifying moment. Right-wing extremism, coming this time not from the partisan mill but from a mainstream women’s organization, was put in a direct and unflattering spotlight. Suddenly, so much was clear, and finally, the response was unified and thunderous. Right-wing overreach — and the backlash it inspired — feels a lot like the way other radical GOP power grabs in the last year have galvanized the public to fight back. Attacks on collective bargaining, public workers and unions by Republican governors in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana have produced mass mobilization in those states, the likes of which we haven’t seen in decades. Public workers – cops, firefighters, nurses, teachers, paramedics, sanitation workers – once were the proud backbone of the middle class. Now they find themselves derided by the GOP as the new welfare queens who are taking more than their fair share. Ohio voters repealed a law that abolished collective bargaining in November, and pro-union organizers in Wisconsin have forced a recall election for Gov. Scott Walker.

Efforts to restrict voting rights are likewise waking up the citizenry; Maine repealed a law that banned same-day voting and registration in November, and Ohio blocked a voter photo ID bill. Even on the issue of reproductive rights, a draconian “personhood” amendment to the state constitution failed to pass in Mississippi, one of the reddest of the red states. Overreach by the right has re-inspired movements – unions, voting rights, women’s rights — that have too long been dormant and too easily dismissed by their ideological opponents as outside the mainstream of American values, when in fact, they used to represent the most American of values.

For defenders of Planned Parenthood, and more broadly for reproductive rights activists, this moment of repositioning is a valuable one. Until now, it has proven very difficult for advocates to resuscitate their side with language anywhere near as powerful as that used by antiabortion forces. Instead they have relied too heavily on the fungible, limp, endlessly open-ended language of “choice.” (Even among “pro-choice” advocates, the “I choose my choice!” joke from “Sex and the City” has become a ubiquitous critique.)

But what happened this week was powerful. It was mass. It was direct. It was emotional. And it restores women as the moral center of this conversation — which is where they belong.

: Rebecca Traister writes for Salon. She is the author of "Big Girls Don't Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women" (Free Press). Follow @rtraister on Twitter. More Rebecca Traister
: Joan Walsh is Salon's editor at large. More Joan Walsh

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Komen victim of “bullying,” sad abortion foe says

Someone make an "It Gets Better" video for poor Kathryn Jean Lopez of the National Review

By Alex Pareene

A very serious anti-bullying message from Kathryn Jean Lopez

Topics:National Review, Breast cancer, Planned Parenthood, Abortion, Bullying

Poor Kathryn Jean Lopez, the National Review Online’s resident delicate flower, anti-feminist traditional Catholic, and enemy of all homosexualists and abortionists. She was so delighted when Susan G. Komen for the Cure announced that it would no longer be sending grant money to Planned Parenthood to fund breast cancer screenings and mammogram referrals, because it meant that her side had “won” a battle in the war against women’s health providers that perform abortions and provide contraception.

She was so excited, in fact, that she forgot that the decision was NOT ABOUT ABORTION WHATEVER GAVE YOU THAT IDEA. Later she posted that hilarious YouTube video of Komen CEO Nancy Brinker explaining that the Planned Parenthood decision was not in any way political, no sir. (At least one commenter noted the disconnect: “Really curious what K-Lo thinks Komen is actually doing here. When the news broke, she seemed pleased and pointed out right-to-lifers had been trying to force Komen to shuck PP. But she also believes Komen’s [ridiculous] assertion that the decision has nothing to do with politics and was just a big coincidence? Hunh?”)

After a great deal of public outcry, Komen reversed itself and said Planned Parenthood would be eligible for future grants.

This, obviously, was very sad news for K-Lo. She seemed stunned at first, but then decided that Komen was the victim of bullying.

The years-long campaign by antiabortion groups to lobby Komen to cease sending money to Planned Parenthood — the campaign Lopez cited in her initial post crowing about that campaign’s victory — was just regular political speech, but the widespread outcry over the decision was, obviously, bullying. (Or, as Daniel Foster put it, “gangsterism.” Foster only approves of reasonable and polite “speech,” which is to say, writing checks.)

Lopez, like many conservatives whose baffling interpretation of common liberal concepts leads them to find “hypocrisies” where none exist (Michelle Obama ate a french fry!!!!), darkly mutters about “that anti-bullying campaign,” because accusing a massive charitable foundation of playing politics with its supposed mission is patently the same thing as humiliating vulnerable young people until they become suicidal.

(Bullying, for Lopez’s future reference, is not just “people being mean to you,” but more accurately lengthy campaigns of abuse carried out against people who are or feel unable to defend themselves. Just ask the students of Anoka-Hennepin public schools if you’re still confused.)

: Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene

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How the Internet changed Komen’s mind

The torrent of reactions to the cancer group's Planned Parenthood defunding proves the power of social media

VIDEO

By Mary Elizabeth Williams

Nancy Brinker, founding chair of Susan G. Komen for the Cure (Credit: AP/Salon)

Topics:Breast cancer, Planned Parenthood, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, Editor's Picks

It started with a tweet. And in the end, that’s what won the war. On Tuesday, Planned Parenthood sent out a no-punches-pulling alert that “Susan G. Komen caves under anti-choice pressure, ends funding for breast cancer screenings at PP health centers.” By Friday, Komen for the Cure had said it was sorry, and reversed its decision.

Within minutes on that Tuesday bombshell, the tale had become not just a news story but a social media explosion, with a flurry of responses pouring out across Facebook, Twitter and Komen’s own message boards – overwhelmingly disapproving of Komen for the Cure’s severing of its ties to Planned Parenthood. And in the process, it became an object lesson in how to handle a crisis, how to make it worse, and then how to fix it.

Planned Parenthood is, by now, well versed in how to handle outside attacks and negative publicity. Along the way, the organization has become pretty smooth at it. From the moment that first message about Komen appeared, Planned Parenthood remained relentless in keeping momentum going on the story, posting links to news coverage, retweeting supportive messages, and repeatedly reminding people how to donate to the cause across all of its social media platforms.

Komen, in contrast, could hardly have seemed more spectacularly blundering in all of it. As one commenter posted, “the last thing as unpopular on Facebook as this Komen thing was Michael Jackson’s death.” Not only did the organization clearly not even consider sending out its own preemptive, damage-controlling message, it waited more than a full day before responding to the outcry at all. And when it did, oof. In a tense, frozen-faced message on YouTube, its founder and CEO, Nancy Brinker, talked about moving forward with “new strategies” and declared, “We will never bow to political pressure … The scurrilous accusations being hurled at this organization are profoundly hurtful … and a dangerous distraction.” She never mentioned Planned Parenthood once. Deanna Zandt, consultant and author of “Share This! How You Will Change the World With Social Networking,” told Salon Friday, “I’m going to start using that video in my workshops as an example of what not to do.”

Komen for the Cure is not in the same business as Planned Parenthood – and it doesn’t need to be. But had Komen truly wished to give the appearance of being apolitical, Nancy Brinker might have acknowledged the story in a less obviously gutless way in her message. Surely Brinker could have taken a moment to say something along the lines of, “We’ve had to make some changes that we feel will be of more direct service to low-income women, but we’re proud of our years of association with Planned Parenthood, and support our colleagues in their ongoing efforts for the cause of women’s health.”

Komen’s Twitter feed had been similarly testy of late, with updates that “Our Board approved new grants standards to improve direct services to women” and “Our supporters know that no other #breastcancer organization serves women at the size and scope that Susan G. Komen for the Cure does.”

Why does it matter? Because while Komen was cautiously portioning out terse, defensive responses that smacked of “You should all be grateful for how much we do for you people,” Planned Parenthood and its supporters had been not just expressing their indignation but harnessing it, in ways that will both make you weep and make you laugh. Social media is all about connection. That’s why Planned Parenthood not only posted a letter from a supporter; it made it the organization’s newest petition. “When you go after Planned Parenthood and the people they serve,” it reads in part, “you go after ME.” Direct, personal and powerful.

That’s why Deanna Zandt decided, when people were talking about pulling their money from Komen — “What do you do if you don’t have money to pull?” — to create Planned Parenthood Saved Me with the message to “Pinkwash THIS.” In no time, the Tumblr was flooded with heart-stopping tales of cancer detection, healthcare services, lives saved, all doled out with, significantly, “dignity.” And that’s also why, in the last few days, your Facebook page has likely become a torrent of brilliant eCards and cartoons, and why the Komen Web page was hacked in such a subtly funny manner. You want to get your message across? You want to maintain your credibility with your constituents? Hammer and keep hammering at the heartstrings and the funny bones. And hammer some more.

One could argue that the uppity, snark-lobbing types who tweet their rage and create blogs aren’t the kind of people who can hit Komen where it hurts – in donations. But the backlash was so strong and so sustained that it didn’t take long to ripple right out there to America’s wallets. Planned Parenthood swiftly saw a stunning boom in donations – including a fat promise of up to $250,000 from New York’s billionaire Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

So then what happened? A stunning reversal. On Friday morning, Komen issued the statement that “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’s not exactly a rousing endorsement of PP, nor will it likely deflect scrutiny from its future maneuverings, but it’s amazing nonetheless. Amazing that it happened at all, and even more amazing because in the statement on Twitter, Komen even added that “We want to apologize for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.” Clear. Direct. Human, even. The world sent a message. And Komen learned from it.

UPDATE: Looks like Komen is still getting the hang of these things – oddly enough, they’ve already made Nancy Brinker’s original YouTube response on the matter “private.” The better to act like it never happened?

: Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams

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Komen for the Cure sells out women, again

The pink-ribbon charity, with a Sarah Palin ally as senior policy director, turns its back on Planned Parenthood

By Mary Elizabeth Williams

Karen Handel and Sarah Palin in August, 2010. (Credit: AP/John Bazemore)

Topics:Breast cancer, Health, Planned Parenthood, Cancer

First, the good: Since its founding 30 years ago, Susan G. Komen for the Cure has put over a billion dollars toward research, screening and awareness in the name of eradicating breast cancer. It’s certainly no coincidence that in that same span of time, breast cancer rates have declined sharply, and what was once a devastating diagnosis is now, for many, a treatable condition.

Yet when the news broke Tuesday that Komen was ending its funding for Planned Parenthood breast cancer screenings and services, the organization’s eagerness to throw Planned Parenthood – and the women who depend upon it – under the bus wasn’t surprising. It’s actually thoroughly unshocking for this venerated organization to pull such a crass, insensitive move.

The very name Susan Komen — with its direct association with a real woman, and founder Nancy G. Brinker’s promise to fight the disease that claimed her sister — is heart-tugging. Today, everyone who knows a woman likely has a breast cancer story – and with it, a Komen-flavored story about donning a pink T-shirt and running in a Race for the Cure, or shopping in October for pink-themed “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” notepads to help raise “awareness.” Along the way, Komen has become the McDonald’s of cancer — an easy-to-remember brand with a logo that demands little thought or effort from the consumer. Write a check, buy a ribbon, voila! You get to feel like you’re curing cancer.

It’s not that Komen is some questionable, Wyclef Jean-esque mess. It gets high marks from both the Better Business Bureau and Charity Navigator. Yet this is an organization that has repeatedly come under fire for its extravagant promotion of itself as an organization dedicated to a “cure,” when only a small portion of its expenses go to, you know, curing cancer. Komen itself cops to portioning just 24 percent of its funds to research – and 20 percent to fundraising and administration. For an organization with reported revenues of nearly $350 million, that’s still a lot of money for research. It’s an awful lot for itself, too.

Yet Komen remains pretty damn territorial around that whole “cure” thing. In a 2010 story for the Huffington Post, writer Laura Bassett pointed out that, according to Komen’s own financial records, it spends almost “a million dollars a year in donor funds” aggressively going after other organizations that dare to use the phrase “for the cure” – including small charities like Kites for a Cure, Par for the Cure, Surfing for a Cure, Cupcakes for a Cure, and even a dog-sledding event called Mush for the Cure. Let me just give you that number again. A million bucks a year. Robert Smith, better watch your back.

Komen has also, in its relentless pursuit of ubiquity and corporate sponsorship, aligned itself with more dubious product placement than a “Jersey Shore” marathon. It has a whole online store encouraging visitors to “purchase with purpose to end breast cancer forever,” where you can buy “silicone bling watches” and “Passionately Pink” ribbon-shaped cake pans. And because you’ll have to root around for the numbers, you can spend extravagantly on candles and “spirit gloves” without knowing that merely “at least 25 percent of the retail sales price … will go to Komen to help support … research and community programs.” Twenty-five percent of that $4.95 dog leash? Why, that’s more than a whole dollar!

Komen also famously outsources its merchandising. It’s teamed up with the likes of KFC for “Buckets for the Cure” – because nothing says you care about women’s health like a big vat of fried chicken. Komen has additionally sold a pink-hued “Promise Me” perfume that contains several toxins – including galaxolide, a synthetic musk that critics claim is a hormone disruptor. Komen has promised to reformulate the scent this year, but as Uneasy Pink calculated last spring, that’s still a lot of questionable chemicals to buy when roughly only 3 percent of the purchase price will go to Komen’s oft-invoked “cure” anyway.

And what of Komen’s latest, most potentially damaging stunt with Planned Parenthood? Komen says the move is just about “newly adopted criteria barring grants to organizations that are under investigation by local, state or federal authorities.” You know what else is pretty “new” around Komen? Its senior vice president of public policy, Karen Handel. During the Sarah Palin-endorsed, Tea Party favorite’s 2010 campaign for governor of Georgia, Handel declared, “I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood,” making clear that she “strongly supports” laws prohibiting “the use of taxpayer funds for abortions or abortion-related services.” She did, however, emphasize that she “strongly support(s) the noble work of crisis-pregnancy centers.” If you were one of the world’s biggest charities and were looking to hire someone who had women’s welfare as her greatest imperative, would you go for someone who’d send them to a place that offers breast cancer screenings – as well as ovarian cancer screenings and HPV tests? Or someone who prefers a bunch of right-to-life fanatics pretending to be a medical facility? If you picked the former, you’re smarter than Komen for the Cure.

That Komen has raised staggering amounts of money is undeniable. There’s also pretty compelling evidence that it has done so in some pretty boneheaded ways. So given its track record, it’s fair to ask what happens now to the 11 percent of the Komen budget that goes to screening. Does it get funneled toward more glitter bracelets and “Promise Bears”? And what happens to the women who depend upon Planned Parenthood to tell them whether or not they have breast cancer? What becomes of mothers and daughters and wives and friends who believed that Komen’s commitment to “the cure” meant something more than protecting its catchphrase? It’s worth noting that while breast cancer rates are dipping, an October report from the American Cancer Society warned that they are declining more slowly among low-income women, and that “Poor women are now at greater risk for breast cancer death because of less access to screening and better treatments. This continued disparity is impeding real progress against breast cancer.” You know who loses when Komen backs away from Planned Parenthood? Probably not those nice, pink-clad ladies who attend Susan Komen wine-tasting events.

Women’s healthcare is not about lace-trimmed scarves and bottles of perfume. It’s sure as hell not about some feel-good, lip-service version of what my colleague Rebecca Traister calls “infantilizing Pepto-ed advocacy.” It’s not even — for anyone still stupid enough to think Planned Parenthood is some giant fetus-killing complex — about abortion. It’s about screening. It’s about treatment. It’s just that simple. The further away an organization gets from that mission, the more women suffer. It’s just that simple too. And you don’t make good on a “promise” to your dead sister by selling out women who need you most.

: Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams