Why the New Planned Parenthood Controversy Raises Old Questions

If you've been paying attention to recent events involving Planned Parenthood and Susan G. Komen for the Cure, you probably have whiplash by now.

First, Komen—the world's best-known breast-cancer-fighting organization—decided to stop giving funds to Planned Parenthood. Two reasons were given: Komen's policy against supporting organizations under investigation, and the fact that PP does mammogram referrals rather than actual mammograms. Said Komen founder Nancy Brinker, "We have decided not to fund, wherever possible, pass-through grants. 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."

That story was greeted with a storm of protest by the pro-choice movement, and loud cheers from pro-lifers. Many of these pro-lifers, who had long been deterred by the PP connection from giving to Komen, started opening their wallets and checkbooks for the organization for the first time.

Then, this morning, Komen released an apology. Their official statement read, in part: "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 …. 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."

(The investigation in question deals with, among other things, covering up and even enabling the exploitation of minors—an accusation that has dogged Planned Parenthood for many years. If that's not criminal, I'm really not sure what is.)

While pro-choicers celebrated, many pro-lifers rushed to stop their checks. But wait, say some—it's not quite that simple. The Post's Greg Sargent wrote early this afternoon, "I just got off the phone with a Komen board member, and he confirmed that the announcement does not mean that Planned Parenthood is guaranteed future grants—a demand he said would be 'unfair' to impose on Komen."

Pro-life activist and blogger Jill Stanek added on her own site, "[Komen's] statement represents nothing new …. Nancy Brinker had already stated they would continue to fund Planned Parenthood's existing grants through 2012 (one through 2013) …. This is Komen's attempt to get the abortion mafia off their backs."

What is one to make of all this? One conclusion appears inescapable: The power Planned Parenthood wields is out of all proportion to the services it actually provides for women. When Nancy Brinker is on the front page of the Washington Post one morning pointing out that Planned Parenthood doesn't even do mammograms, and by noon her organization is apologizing for having upset PP and its supporters, the question arises: Is this really about women's health?

It's not a new question; on the contrary, it's one that pro-lifers have been asking for years. It's long been a source of frustration to many supporters of the fight against breast cancer—I'm one of them, having watched my own mother go through it—that we can't give to the leading organization in that fight without being asked to check our consciences at the door. Planned Parenthood's tainted agenda includes the conflating of abortion with "women's issues," and they've done this so aggressively and effectively that they've hoodwinked millions into believing that it is the women's issue of our time, inseparable from the issue of women's health in general. Hence the widespread notion that for Komen or anyone else to defund PP, the largest abortion provider in the country, for any reason is to hurt women. Even if, as it turns out, all that most PP clinics usually do regarding breast cancer is to serve as an unnecessary middleman.

As an editorial in National Review Online explained this morning, "Planned Parenthood has worked diligently to associate itself with contraception and cancer screening, non-controversial and positive things in the minds of most Americans." That mainstreaming has helped one of the world's bloodiest businesses gain such a veneer of respectability that many Americans practically think of Planned Parenthood in the same category as mom, apple pie, and baseball. It's a triumph of propaganda—and a tragedy for women, who are being fed a distorted, diminished view of what womanhood is about.

So Komen's vow in today's statement to keep politics out of future funding is sadly ironic, considering that that's just what they were about to do for the first time. How their latest statement will play out in this highly charged atmosphere remains to be seen. But as we watch Komen, like so many other institutions before it, bend over backward to placate Planned Parenthood, it's hard to avoid the thought that it's all just business as usual.

Gina Dalfonzo is editor of BreakPoint.org and Dickensblog and author of 'Bring Her Down': How the American Media Tried to Destroy Sarah Palin.