The Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation reversed its ill-conceived policy of the past few days and said it was changing its funding criteria (yet again) to allow it to consider continued funding of Planned Parenthood -- all this after a firestorm of protest when it said its new rules would not allow it to fund any organization under investigation. Abortion foe Rep. Cliff Stearns has been investigating PP to see if any federal money was used for abortion services.
Now SGK says it has changed its funding criteria to allow it to fund organizations under investigation and will only definitely exclude those for which the outcome of an investigation was "criminal and conclusive." SGK apologized for its misseteps, and SGK board member John Raffaelli said the original policy "didn't come out very clearly." If the original policy was merely unclear, why did it have to be revised again as opposed to just clarified? Apparently, the original new policy was all too clear, and it caused former SGK supporters, as well as some senators and even its own staffers and affiliates, to strongly take issue with the new policy.
As this observer noted yesterday, if SGK wants to make a clean start, abortion foe Karen Handel, the organization's relatively new Senior VP for Public Policy will have to be thrown overboard. Arthur Caplan, PhD, Professor of Bioethics and Director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, goes even further, writing, "There is one last step that can be taken to save the mighty Komen from running aground permanently. The entire executive leadership and board must resign. Now. Anything less means that the prominence that Komen achieved will become simply one more in a long list of worthy causes that Americans may or may not choose to support."
Does Dr. Caplan include Nancy Brinker, the founder and CEO of SGK (and sister of the late Susan Komen), in his assessment of who needs to resign? That would be a strong prescription, indeed. But if she is truly dedicated to the SGK mission, Ms Brinker needs to seriously consider the advice.
But no matter what SGK does, it has permanently injured itself. All it can do is hope to mitigate the damage.
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