People who run private charities that award grants to Planned Parenthood have got to be wondering if their organizations will receive the “Komen Treatment,” a mafia-style shakedown, if they ever decide not to fund the group. Will their organizations’ good names be dragged through the mud in a vicious, cruel and demeaning campaign to dishonor their life-saving work? Probably. The people who run Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion chain, want money and don’t care who they have to beat down in order to get it.
As a former manager and employee of the year of a Planned Parenthood in Texas, I know what Planned Parenthood does for women’s health, and it sickens me. At my clinic, we didn’t have cancer screening quotas to fill — we had abortion quotas to fill, because that’s what made us money. In fact, Planned Parenthood isn’t even allowed to perform anything other than manual breast exams so we had to refer out sometimes for breast abnormalities. We would send low-income women to a mammography and diagnostic center that would provide the services for free.
But here’s the kicker: If a low-income woman comes in to Planned Parenthood for a breast exam, the federal government will pay for it. The Komen money isn’t really necessary. Taxpayers give $1 million a day to Planned Parenthood, more than enough to cover free cancer screenings. And if the government wised up and stopped funding the abortion giant, the underprivileged and uninsured would be fine because there are over 7,000 federally qualified health centers around the country that serve the underprivileged and uninsured — many of which provide free cancer screenings.
The despicable campaign that Planned Parenthood waged against Komen has revealed Planned Parenthood’s true colors. The group cares about money, money and more money. It has become not only the country’s largest abortion provider but one of the top lobbying groups in the nation, a force to be reckoned with, which is an unfortunate thing if you are a well-loved national organization that wants to focus on saving lives rather than maneuvering through unfriendly political waters.
Komen did not need to apologize for cutting off funds to Planned Parenthood. The abortion giant thinks it is above the law even though it is under criminal investigation for many, many good reasons — it has defrauded Medicaid to the tune of millions of dollars and has been caught on tape telling 13- and 14-year-olds how to get abortions after being impregnated by men in their 30s and telling pimps how to get secret abortions for young girls who are being used for sex trafficking.
Komen is on the front lines of life-saving breast cancer research. It doesn’t need to be funding a referral service, much less a shady and unsavory group that has been caught in several questionable controversies. Komen should be funding groups that are on the front lines of women’s health, not in the back corner.
Abby Johnson is the former director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas and the author of Unplanned, which chronicles both her experiences within Planned Parenthood and her dramatic exit.
