Friday’s editorial presented the controversy regarding the Komen Foundation and Planned Parenthood as an issue of Komen losing its focus on cancer screening by choosing, unnecessarily, according to the authors, to involve itself in political controversy. Rather than asking about Planned Parenthood’s (a $1 billion corporation funded by almost $500 million in tax revenue) coordinated media onslaught demonizing Komen (a nonprofit whose grants account for a tiny percentage of PP’s budget) as anti-woman supporters of religious extremists, the Lariat’s editorial authors find Komen guilty of injecting politics into a “public health and poverty issue.”
This is absurd and reflects, at best, aggressive ignorance of the situation – as even a cursory glance at readily available media sources would show. Planned Parenthood has always been, since its founding by the racist eugenicist Margaret Sanger (whom they still honor), a political organization. PP regularly demonizes pro-life activists with the worst kind of hateful and politically demonizing rhetoric. Now, PP has revealed that even choosing to avoid its politically poisoned company – which is what Komen attempted to do – counts as an act of aggression! Apparently, even for such complicated and nuanced issues as women’s health, only certain choices will be tolerated by the “evangelists” of the pseudo-gospel of choice.
The Komen foundation can better focus on its mission by funding organizations that 1) actually perform mammograms (PP does not) and 2) do not require complicated financial wizardry (as PP does) to claim that the dollars funding preventative health services taking place in Room 102 are different dollars than those funding the abortions committed in Room 101.
The Lariat editorial staff can better focus on its mission of encouraging informed debate at our university by giving an informed account that presents accurately the full context and basic claims at issue in important controversies.
—David Wilmington
Graduate Student,
Department. of Religion
