Karen Handel

Former Susan G. Komen executive Karen Handel, the Georgia Republican politician who has been largely credited with the cancer charity’s disastrous decision last year to withdraw its grants to Planned Parenthood, spoke yesterday to the Family Research Council. Promoting her book about the episode, “Planned Bullyhood,” Handel accused Planned Parenthood of launching an “unprecedented, premeditated, Mafia-style assault” on Komen. Further, she alleges that Planned Parenthood “literally co-opted the color pink” from Komen in a sinister “bait and switch.”

The former Susan G. Komen for the Cure executive who orchestrated the organization’s controversial and short-lived break from Planned Parenthood earlier this year, is out with a new book claiming that the funding dispute was all Planned Parenthood’s fault. In “Planned Bullyhood,” Karen Handel claims that Planned Parenthood turned its back on a “gentlewomen’s agreement” to not discuss the fact that Komen was withdrawing $680,000 a year in grants for breast cancer screenings through the organization’s clinics and then turned on Komen in a PR blitz.

Handel, an anti-choice activist and former GOP candidate who reportedly pushed the move within Komen, resigned shortly after the news of the break caused a national firestorm.

In interviews with right-wing radio hosts Janet Mefferd and Janet Parshall last week, Handel portrays herself as the victim of bullying by the “vicious” Planned Parenthood. She tells Mefferd that Planned Parenthood launched “a mafia-style attack” and that “Komen was held hostage for a mere $680,000.” She sees a double standard in the fact that President Obama didn’t call her after she was criticized, “like he did Sandra Fluke”:

Handel: The left and Planned Parenthood, they were threatening Komen’s corporate sponsors: “See what we’re doing to Komen? If you don’t stop supporting them, we’re gonna do the same to you.” They were just filling up the Facebooks, Twitter, Komen’s website crashed, there were bomb threats, corporate sponsors were threatened. It really was almost a mafia-style attack, if you will, and Komen was held hostage for a mere $680,000. And Planned Parenthood and the left, they wanted this to be about politics. I believe they used Komen purposefully as a pawn, if you will, in this ridiculous so-called “War on Women” and these cries of “women’s health.” And Janet, my question for you, and I just find this all so insulting, how in the world did the issue of women’s health get reduced to being about abortion and contraception?

Meffered: Right. I’m with you.

Handel: I just reject that. I reject that notion, and I think that most women do too.

Mefferd: Oh, completely. And what I found very interesting, Karen, doing the show that I do, and being pro-life and knowning a lot of pro-lifers, when Susan G. Komen made that decision and all the pro-lifers were going “Yes, finally, great!,” the next thing people were saying was, “Now watch what Planned Parenthood will do to them.” You know, we knew. We knew exactly how Planned Parenthood would react, though admittedly it was more over the top than I think a lot of us believed it would be. It was shameful what they did.

Handel: You know, it really was. And you know, they had such an amicable partner in all of it, which was the liberal mainstream press, which really served almost as an extension of all of it and really targeted the politics, my personal politics, Ambassador Brinker’s personal politics. And I’d like to point out, you did not see Susan G. Komen for the Cure endorsing presidential candidates the way Planned Parenthood has, you don’t see Komen investing, what’s Planned Parenthood gonna spend, almost $10 million in campaign ads to support Barack Obama. Nobody, the president didn’t call me and let me know he was sorry about the attacks that I faced, like he did Sandra Fluke.

Handel told Parshall that Planned Parenthood’s “agenda” is “not about women’s health” or “they would not have wanted to try to destroy” Komen.

Parshall: Planned Parenthood’s assault, to use your word, and by the way you started using that word back in February of this year, way before it became the title of your book, if they’re bullying people because they might have a pro-life position, it really calls into account whether they are pro-women or whether they are politically aligned rather than rising to a higher cause.

Handel: I think that’s right, I think you’ve really hit on it, Janet. And for Komen, that’s exactly what Komen was trying to do. Komen wanted to be in a place where everyone, regardless of whether they were pro-life or on the other side of the issue, would be able to embrace the organization and embrace the mission. We wanted to be neutral and we wanted to be good stewards of dollars. Don’t get me wrong, it was both. Planned Parenthood, on the other hand, they were willing to sacrifice Komen for the sake of their agenda, which is not about women’s health. If it was about women’s health, they would not have wanted to try to destroy an organization that was doing such good work in the area of breast cancer.

After a fierce pressure campaign, the Religious Right is positively giddy about the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation’s move to stop funding breast exams and mammogram referrals at Planned Parenthood, which conducts approximately 750,000 breast exams every year.

Now, anti-choice activists are returning to the discredited charge that abortion causes breast cancer.

To be clear, the US National Cancer Institute found that both induced and spontaneous abortion “is not linked to an increase in breast cancer risk” and a study by Harvard professor Karin B. Michels of the Harvard Medical School similarly concluded that “neither induced nor spontaneous abortion was associated with the incidence of breast cancer.”

Furthermore, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists claim that the most recent and methodologically sound studies “demonstrate no causal relationship between induced abortion and a subsequent increase in breast cancer risk” and the American Cancer Society called the purported link a “false alarm” since “the scientific evidence does not support the notion that abortion of any kind raises the risk of breast cancer or any other type of cancer.”

Talk show host Janet Parshall appeared on Today’s Issues with Ed Vitagliano and claimed that Komen was in an “unholy alliance” with Planned Parenthood and said “might be a cause of some of the reasons why people are wearing pink ribbons, pink t-shirts and running in the race.” Vitagliano said that legal abortion “may very well be an explanation of why the incidence of breast cancer in this country is so staggeringly high”:

Bryan Fischer on Focal Point today alleged that “early abortions are a risk factor, a huge risk factor, perhaps the main risk factor for breast cancer.” According to Fischer, “Planned Parenthood is out there causing breast cancer”:

Fischer also praised Karen Handel, the former Republican politician with a history of attacking Planned Parenthood who was recently named Komen’s Vice President for Public Policy, as a hero for “standing in the gap” against “the Enemy”: