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Deja vu

By Patricia Pitkus Bainbridge

It was April 1990. Faye Wattleton, then-president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) was fuming. AT&T*, who had funded PPFA for 25 years, had just announced the month before that the abortion giant would no longer be eligible for financial support.

Rightly believing the reason AT&T ceased funding PPFA was the result of the efforts led by the Christian Action Council, PPFA embarked on a public condemnation of AT&T and the pro-life movement.

PPFA purchased full page ads costing an average of $40,000 each in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Investor's Daily and USA Today headlined with: "Caving in to extremists, AT&T hangs up on Planned Parenthood." The ads also had two coupons: one for contributions and one to send to AT&T.

PPFA officials kept up the pressure on AT&T to reverse their decision. Even some pro-abortion members of Congress?led by Senator Barbara Boxer D-California joined the fray.

What these individuals either failed to understand or simply ignored was that once you have publicly spewed vitriol against an individual or group, you have pretty much ended any incentive to support you.

Twenty-two years later, Susan G. Komen (SGK) has decided Planned Parenthood is ineligible for future funding. And what does PPFA do? Just what they did when AT&T ceased its funding.

It's deja vu.

The only differences: Cecile Richards (not Wattleton) is fuming; mass emails are being sent by PPFA and its friends expressing how "hurt" they are; PPFA is encouraging social media to go after SGK; and the mainstream media--firmly entrenched in its support of "abortion central"--is treating Komen founder and Chief Executive Nancy G. Brinker as an enemy of women. Oh, and Senator Patty Murray D-Washington has joined Barbara Boxer D-California in falsely claiming that SGK's lack of support for Planned Parenthood will hurt women's health.

If Planned Parenthood and its ilk really hope for future support from SGK, they are certainly going about it in the wrong way. Why would SGK ever even consider future support when Planned Parenthood and its "friends" are on the attack?

This evening, PPFA announced the creation of a "Planned Parenthood Breast Health Fund" to solicit donations. And just what will Planned Parenthood do with these funds? They do not provide mammograms, breast MRIs, stereotactic breast biopsies, ultrasound-guided breast biopsies, radiation, or chemotherapy. So, what do they do? Some centers offer clinical breast exams (CBE) and distribute American Cancer Society brochures--that's it.

These services are done free of charge at any one of the 1,048 of Federally Qualified Health Centers or the 3,755 Rural Health Clinics in the US as well as at local health departments and hospitals.

In addition, with Planned Parenthood being the largest single provider of abortions in this country, they are contributing to--not reducing--breast cancer. The Breast Cancer Prevention Institute "52 of 68 epidemiological studies" demonstrate that abortion raises breast cancer risk.

I applaud SGK in taking their first step in doing what is right for women by making Planned Parenthood ineligible for funding. I wish I could convey to them that the flack they are receiving is deja vu?that Planned Parenthood and its ilk always go after anyone who dares to disagree with them.

And, it is NOT about the money. It's about PPFA's credibility. As then-president of PPFA, Faye Wattleton wrote in her book, Life on the Line, about the AT&T issue, "Corporate support was only about 5 percent of our budget, but it meant a great deal to us. The credibility that such endorsements bestowed was at least as valuable as the actual dollars given."

This is why PPFA and its followers are fuming. SGK's decision has dealt a blow to Planned Parenthood's credibility and they don't like it!

*AT&T was the first well known Planned Parenthood supporting corporation to be removed from the boycott list managed by the then-Christian Action Council (now managed by Life Decisions International). Since 1990, at least 282 corporations have followed in AT&T's footsteps.