Breaking: Karen Handel resigns from Komen
UPDATE 1:47p: Am told Karen Handel is going on Megyn Kelly’s show on Fox at 2p EST.
11:07a: From AJC.com:
Karen Handel… just announced her resignation as a senior vice president for public of Susan G. Komen for the Cure – one week after the breast cancer charity reversed itself on a decision to sever financial ties with Planned Parenthood.
Below is the letter. Note that Handel says she is declining the offer of a severance package from Komen – which might have required her to keep silent. She’s got a session with reporters this afternoon in Atlanta.
Read the letter at the link. Excerpt:
Komen’s decision to change its granting strategy and exit the controversy surrounding Planned Parenthood and its grants was fully vetted by every appropriate level within the organization. At the November Board meeting, the Board received a detailed review of the new model and related criteria. As you will recall, the Board specifically discussed various issues, including the need to protect our mission by ensuring we were not distracted or negatively affected by any other organization’s real or perceived challenges. No objections were made to moving forward.
I am deeply disappointed by the gross mischaracterizations of the strategy, its rationale, and my involvement in it. I openly acknowledge my role in the matter and continue to believe our decision was the best one for Komen’s future and the women we serve. However, the decision to update our granting model was made before I joined Komen, and the controversy related to Planned Parenthood has long been a concern to the organization. Neither the decision nor the changes themselves were based on anyone’s political beliefs or ideology. Rather, both were based on Komen’s mission and how to better serve women, as well as a realization of the need to distance Komen from controversy. I believe that Komen, like any other nonprofit organization, has the right and the responsibility to set criteria and highest standards for how and to whom it grants.
During interviews the past couple days I have said I didn’t expect Handel to last the week.
Handel’s resignation is the result of an unsurprising witch hunt conducted by Planned Parenthood and the Left to cleanse Komen of pro-lifers and/or PP opponents.
But it is also the result of poor leadership at Komen. CEO Nancy Brinker started all this by playing footsie with Planned Parenthood by deciding to give the abortion giant grant money several years ago.
Brinker has long been a Planned Parenthood supporter, serving on PP of North Dallas’s board as recently as 2011.
By kowtowing to PP Komen has now agreed to give grants to organizations under federal investigation. In the case of PP, it is well documented to have committed waste, abuse, and potential fraud, as have been revealed in state and federal audits.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Now that she’s out of the picture, maybe Komen can begin to repair its shattered image. It was obvious to anyone paying attention that she was the prime mover behind the entire controversy.
Unfortunately, I cannot support this organization ever again. That’s truly sad since my mother is dying from recurring breast cancer.
Seems pretty obvious to me that SGK is all-in with Planned Parenthood once again. By throwing the pro-life advocate at SGK overboard, they’ve made it clear where they’re headed.
Jill-
I’m wondering if it is now appropriate for all those who donated money to Komen last week AFTER they announced they’d no longer donate to PP? This came up at a church meeting last night, and given this latest development, I would think so!
Goodbye, Komen. No amount of damage control can save you now.
Play with fire, and you’re bound to get burned. /shrug
Well, that’s that, I suppose. If they’d kept her on, I could believe that perhaps they were just being quieter about defunding PP. As it is, no. I imagine they’ve gone back over to the dark side.
So much for them.
I was skeptical during this whole ordeal. I’m sorry to anyone that’s given them cash in the last week.
Yeah, this doesn’t surprise me, either.
I don’t think anyone knows which way is up at Komen right now.
Nancy Brinker truly had no idea of the hell that was about to be unleashed on her for daring to change a policy to give money directly to mammogram providers, thereby excluding PP.
Guess she made the mistake of thinking PP cared about women’s health more than their political power and bottom line.
Wrong, Nancy!
No surprise here. Nancy Brinker is what I would call a beltway Republican. She will play footsie with Planned Parenthood if it gets her more bonus points from her overlords.
She has never come out against abortion and never will. From the beginning, I am sure there was an agenda to mislead the public about the true mission of Komen.
Keep running for the Cure. America likes a never ending wars. And as it is, Komen has provided us with such an open ended opportunity.
Nancy Brinker and her Board’s second showing of “courage”:
(a) They demonstrate their “courage” initially by hiding the real reason for defunding Planned Parenthood, using weak investigation nonsense
(b) They lie more & more to twist their way out of the investigation nonsense — direct services, metrics, etc. — because the investigation b.s. was knocked down quickly
(c) They demonstrate their “courage” again by hiding behind Karen Handel
Disgraceful leadership.
Hey Jill… you forgot the link! :D
Never mind, I see it.. d’oh! :oops:
Pray for Karen Handel. Pray that she can now speak the truth. I can’t wait.
Megyn Kelly will be interviewing Karen Handel in the next half hour, sometime between 1:30 and 2:00 EST, on Fox News.
Saw this story earlier on Fox News and again a few minutes ago. Karen Handel will be on live at 2:00 EST.
Very frustrating that news reports, including Fox News, continue to get the story wrong by stating that it was Komen who announced the PP split to the media. Fox has also included in its stories, without questioning or verifying, the deceptive “abortion is 3% of Planned Parenthood services” stat. They need an expert to set the record straight. Got their number Jill?
I find Ms. Handel’s statement,”Neither the decision nor the changes themselves were based on anyone’s political beliefs or ideology,” a politically correct malapropism. If that were the case, why the cave-in to ‘political beliefs and ideology’ in the reversal. Working for months prior to Ms. Handel’s appointment, as she claims,to sever ties with the ever increasing horrific nature of Planned Parenthood belies the timeline of the overnight reversal. Wearing a pink ribbon is now a trade-off. If one believes there is some value to ‘Life-saving’ early detection by abortion specialists (without mammography, apparently… huh?) in a kill zone does not service awareness of the worthiness of Susan G. Komen’s memory, nor the promise Nancy gave to her dying sister. What it does is validate Planned Parenthood’s ‘other’ services. To unite Nancy Komen’s ‘Run For The Cure Foundation” to save women (and men) from breast cancer, and “Planned Parenthood” at the expense of innocent life is utterly oxymoronic.
Well – I hope she sheds light on the process, and maybe even starts her own foundation to battle breast cancer … I wonder if the other people who quit Komen when it looked like they dropped PP will come back to Komen.
A business-MBA case for sure: what not to do when dealing with a media-savvy giant and bully like PP. Hopefully, Komen will someday let the public know and believe themselves about the contraception/abortion breast cancer link. They came close in their recent info on line, stating that a woman’s pregnancy, in some cases, provides a protective event against breast cancer. At least that is a step in the right direction… we will see….
I have read claims that say abortion only accounts for 3% of PP revenue. Is this anywhere close to true? Does anyone know where I can find a reference to accurate facts?
YAY! I have a new hero in Karen Handel. She decided not to take the pay off from PlannedKomenParenthood and go quietly into the night. As I said last week when I was hoping she’d quit Komen and start her OWN nonprofit – I will support her financially and prayerfully as she endeavors in her truly pro-women pursuits. I have tweeted Karen the very same, and I highly encourage all prolifers to do the same. PPact is not the only one who can use social media to their advantage. Let’s stand behind Karen and give her the prayerful and public support she deserves in this courageous move.
“I have read claims that say abortion only accounts for 3% of PP revenue. Is this anywhere close to true? Does anyone know where I can find a reference to accurate facts?”
Becky, what Planned Parenthood claims is that only 3% of its “services” are abortion-related. It does not address what percentage of revenue its abortion services are responsible for.
The 3% statistic is thus highly misleading. PP performs a statistically and objectively large number of abortions –over 300,000 per year– representing over a quarter of those performed in this country. Of the PREGNANT women who went to PP, 97.6% of them got abortions rather than pre-natal care or “adoption referrals” (PP does not itself arrange adoptions).
This recent article in the Weekly Standard provides some links which answer the percent-of-revenue question, and concludes that abortion represents somewhere between 30% and 40%.
The seemingly low 3% figure regarding “services” arises from the fact that PP counts distributing a single condom as “service.” However, using that methodology, McDonald’s could claim that only 3% of its “services” are hamburgers, because the number of napkins, salt and ketchup packages represent 97% of the number of items that its customers take to their tables or their cars.
Reply to Becky, and Henrietta;
Here is the financial statement of Planned Parenthood 2007 (mixed in with other diversionary hocus pocus) Their own records indicate an 80.64% of spending goes to ‘Medical Services’, meaning Abortions. The rest is window dressing. http://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/AR_2007_vFinal.pdf
SGK wakes up one moring and discovers she has been sleeping with the enemy.
SGK attempts to put pp away quietly and pp gives her a public smackdown that every pimp would be proud of.
This is a PSA to all the other hoes in the stable to shut up and lie down.
Yield or be bitch slapped into submission.
In a related note: DemocRATs for Life are shocked, Shocked, SHOCKED! that O’bama hellthcare contained provisions that would force priviate entities to provide abortifacient contraceptions.
DemocRATs for Life?!?!?
Isn’t that an oxymoron?
Kind of like ‘Vegans for Veal’!
But then rats do eat their own offspring.
John,
I’m not sure what they mean by “medical services”. They may be including STD and HIV testing under that heading. I’ve never heard an abortion-revenue figure higher than 40%.
Wow, I want a job where I can be offered a severance package when I resign, too. Don’t feel sorry for Ms. Handel – I’m sure she can get plenty of money shilling for Fox News. P.S. Have the courage of your convictions, Karen. Hold whatever views you hold, but if you have to lie through your teeth, even as you’re leaving a job, you must not have much faith in your beliefs or your actions.
Henrietta. PP doesn’t count how many abortions they perform. It’s only a guess. The guess is always artificially low. They don’t allow for naming a child, or providing death certificates. The statistics mislead due to absolutely no oversight of this group. They will say whatever they want and argue over 38%, when in reality the percentage of dollars in revenues that come into PP for abortion services is an horrific 81%.
It’s too bad that Komen chose to commit suicide by backing off from their position after a handful of noisy malcontents complained on the Internet. The “population” of the Internet has always been overwhelmingly liberal/proabortion since conservatives/prolifers actually work for a living and/or take care of their families instead of living off of the government and killing their children so that they are free to troll internet message boards. Because really, why would you want a child when you can spend all of your time posting crap all over Facebook and playing FarmVille instead?
“Now a child is the very sign and sacrament of personal freedom. He is a fresh free will added to the wills of the world; he is something that his parents have freely chosen to produce and which they freely agree to protect. They can feel that any amusement he gives (which is often considerable) really comes from him and from them and from nobody else. He has been born without the intervention of any master or lord. He is a creation and a contribution; he is their own creative contribution to creation. He is also a much more beautiful, wonderful, amusing and astonishing thing than any of the stale stories or jingling jazz tunes turned out by the machines. When men no longer feel that he is so, they have lost the appreciation of primary things, and therefore all sense of proportion about the world. People who prefer the mechanical pleasures, to such a miracle, are jaded and enslaved. They are preferring the very dregs of life to the first fountains of life. They are preferring the last, crooked, indirect, borrowed, repeated and exhausted things of our dying Capitalist civilisation, to the reality which is the only rejuvenation of all civilisation. It is they who are hugging the chains of their old slavery; it is the child who is ready for the new world. ”
-GK Chesterton
“Don’t feel sorry for Ms. Handel – I’m sure she can get plenty of money shilling for Fox News. P.S. Have the courage of your convictions, Karen. Hold whatever views you hold, but if you have to lie through your teeth, even as you’re leaving a job, you must not have much faith in your beliefs or your actions.”
I agree, Maria. Good riddance to her.
John, many of us liberals do work for a living. I don’t even have a Facebook account
Mother’s Day oughta be interesting this year.
“Neither the decision nor the changes themselves were based on anyone’s political beliefs or ideology.” – ROFLMBO
“the need to distance Komen from controversy” – which wouldn’t exist if not for people like her.
So did she quit when she realised she couldn’t subvert komen as extensively as she would have liked or was she pushed once they realised how much damage she was doing?
Re: Planned Parenthood does abortion only 3% of the time.
Parent/boyfriend/husband beats, burns and/or breaks bones only 3% of the time. Good provider otherwise including health insurance and bandages. 3% of 24 hours = 43+ minutes a day. Yikes! Very sad!!! :o(
PP is what it is. They admit it. How and why can/would you defend them???
What have we learned? PP is the pimp, Komen was giving it out, tried to get out, got slammed, and came back. Lesson: Get women out from under the pimp’s thumb.
Now, bigger fish to fry: How do we get ourselves out? I mean…doesn’t Pimp Daddy O have us hooked, too? Let me explain: We’ve been mandated to pay for “servicing the needs” of the…. woman…..naaaah, man….you crazy !!…. it’s the “nearby guy”…..he’s gettin’ it…..you *payin* for it….*chump* (a street term for “cuckold”). Getting the picture? There’s an even bigger picture out there, folks, and we need to look at it…like…now.
Have any of you ever heard of USAID ? Well, they’ve been “servicing” the world with our “foreign aid” for fifty years now (thus US*AID*…get it?…clever, right?). Here’s what they do: They go to foreign countries and say “We’re from the United States and we’re here to help you.” Then they inform the foreign govt that they’ll only help their dying population with meds and meals if the women get abortions and sterilizations, and the men get snipped. What choice do they have, right?
This is looking more n more like the pimp/ho scenario all the time, donchya think? You recognize the pimp by the “bling”. In this case the bling would be many “Humanitarian Awards” given out to USAID workers for their “Tireless efforts to eradicate poverty in the third world…blah,blah, yaddda, yadda”
Here’s the thing: Maybe some day soon, a “Team” will show up at your parish, and advise everyone of their “right to ObamaCare” and will advise everybody of their “benefits” under the Plan. Starting to sound a little familiar now? Anyway, they gonna help you decide whether the plan is gonna be “acceptable” by the “group” (which means you, the individual…but I digress). In order to make the Plan work, some of these moms and dads with bigger families are gonna have to do a “shared sacrifice” thing. The Team will give you access to the meds and such, but….”We need for some of all y’all to get aborted & sterilized here…..”
“Step up, c’mon now, don’t be a selfish person,….we can’t wait all day. Father….give us a hand, tell these people we’re only doing this thang for their own good….don’t want a panic on your hands, do you, Father?”
“There’s no trap so secure as the one we set for ourselves.”~Unknown~
“Imagination governs the world.”~Napoleon Bonaparte~
“all those who donated money to Komen last week AFTER they announced they’d no longer donate to PP”
This is a great point. I didn’t donate anything to komen after the announcement, nor did I write to thank them. I don’t think people should be congratulated simply for doing what is right.
@Joanne: I donated my $1; even sent a Valentine’s card.
Things aren’t always what they seem. These were deceived and destroyed women, being used and abused by PimpDaddyPP. Just because they live in a brownstone don’t mean they can’t be loved for what they really are. Is there anything more powerful than Forgiveness? Didn’t Jesus forgive the woman caught in adultery?
Judge not? Why not….when what you see is True? And what you want for you is forgiveness. How can we be forgiven if we don’t forgive? We gotta love ’em all, not just the ones who are love-able (that’s not a suggestion…it’s the “whole of the Law”).
Jesus wasn’t deceived (but He looked to everyone like He was); He wasn’t destroyed (but He looked to everyone like He surely was). We are a Resurrection People. It’s not where you start, it’s where you finish. Finish strong; Our Lord did.
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