To say that the Super Bowl is wonderful because of a dazzling half-time program would be accurate. It would also be misleading. The Super Bowl is about football, not about entertaining.
To say that Planned Parenthood is significant because of its health services to women would be accurate. It would also be misleading. The Planned Parenthood is about, well, planned parenthood: abortion, contraception, and sexually transmitted diseases, not about medical services for women.
Planned Parenthood earns approximately $164 million annually from abortions, while the Komen grants to Planned Parenthood came to $650,000 last year. (This, according to the Wall Street Journal, financed 19 programs that offered manual breast exams but only referrals for mammograms performed elsewhere.)
That puts the Komen-supplied budget for womens health services offered by Planned Parenthood at about 4/1000th of 1 percent of the income Planned Parents derives from abortions. Hardly even a half-time event.
Therefore, when the Susan B. Komen Foundation tried to dissociate itself from the political controversy of abortion by defunding an extremely tiny portion of both its own and Planned Parenthoods budget for breast screenings, the Komen Foundation was endangering neither its mission, nor women, nor Planned Parenthood.
Yet, Komen was figuratively tarred and feathered for taking sides i.e., the wrong side in the abortion debate. The criticism of Komen was political, not medical.
By any criterion of medical benefit for women, the Susan B. Komen Foundation outranks Planned Parenthood.
Judaism allows, indeed mandates, abortion in rare instances; the wholesale facilitation of abortion by Planned Parenthood makes a mockery of Judaisms position on abortion. On the other hand, the Susan B. Komen Foundation fully embraces the halachic imperative to save lives.
Planned Parenthood is under congressional and criminal investigation in Arizona, Indiana, Alabama, Kansas and Texas for a variety of allegations, including failure to report criminal child sex abuse. The Komen Foundation is not under criminal investigation anywhere. It wanted to distance itself from an organization that is.
Planned Parenthood fights legislation banning abortions of fetuses old enough to be viable, and opposes a bill to ban abortions for the purpose of sex selection! Sex selection is hardly a criterion for abortion under any Jewish perspective.
Under the influence of Planned Parenthood, the federal government now requires any employer to provide funding for another form of planned parenthood birth control including religiously affiliated charitable institutions that provide hospital care and other medical services for the poor. They should have the right to opt out on the basis of the First Amendments guarantee of the free exercise of religion.
The entity that ought to be embarrassed today is not the Susan B. Komen Foundation, but Planned Parenthood. The Komen Foundation is consistently fighting for life. That is a Jewish value. Planned Parenthood is not consistently fighting for life, but for unlimited choice. The Jewish preference here is clear.
Copyright © 2012 by the Intermountain Jewish News
