What a difference a day makes. In a surprising (but not exactly unexpected) retreat, Susan G. Komen for the Cure has apologized for their recent decision to stop funding breast cancer screenings through Planned Parenthood (an organization that does about 700,000 of them a year, by the way). The decision set off an online inferno of controversy, and led to a big uptick in donations to Planned Parenthood, including $10,000 raised by the Tampa Chapter at a luncheon on Thursday.
Though Komen founder Nancy Brinker and the Board of Directors still claim in their statement that the original decision was not politically motivated (a highly dubious claim, to say the least), the group also states that, "Our only goal for our granting process is to support women and families in the fight against breast cancer. Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has no place in our grant process. We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities."
Read the entire statement after the jump …
