Seeing Pink
Komen Houston president Betsy Kamin weighs in on controversy: Don't make localwomen pay for national organization's decision
When the national organization Susan G. Komen for the Cure announced this week that it would cease funding to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screening programs nationwide, response was swift, and it was intense.
Planned Parenthood supporters across the country took to the web to declare their disgust with Komen — and vowed to cease support of the organization altogether.
The shocking move by what has historically been an apolitical organization (despite its Republican ties) was no less shocking to many local chapters, as Komen Houston board President Betsy Kamin can attest. Kamin, who is a partner at the law firm of Strasburger & Price and has served on Komen's board for seven years, tells CultureMap that Komen affiliates were given no forewarning that the national foundation was ending its longstanding relationship with Planned Parenthood.
"We learned about it from the media just as everyone else did, and that was pretty shocking and disappointing," Kamin says, "Very un-Komen like."
Also disappointing, she says, is the reactionary backlash local affiliates have felt over national's decision.
"It's really a national decision that doesn't have any impact on Houston. The most disturbing thing is people suggesting that other people should boycott the Houston race or other races around the country, which would just be a tragedy for the women we serve."
Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast has never requested for Komen Houston to fund it locally, Kamin says, due in part to Houston's vast resources in the Texas Medical Center. (Unlike many more rural areas, Planned Parenthood is not the only resource here for free cancer screenings).
And Komen Houston — which functions relatively autonomously, with its own fundraising, its own bylaws and its own grant-making decisions — keeps 75 percent of the money it raises within the seven Houston-area counties it serves. (Of the 25 percent that goes to nationals, Kamin says, as far more comes back due to Houston's expansive medical center.)
"It's really a national decision that doesn't have any impact on Houston," she says. "The most disturbing thing is people suggesting that other people should boycott the Houston race or other races around the country, which would just be a tragedy for the women we serve."
As for the alleged political impetus behind the move, Kamin says it's certainly not from the Nancy Brinker she knows.
"We have always been studiously non-partisan. It's not at all like things have been done in the past, and I don't believe Nancy Brinker is a pawn of the right wing or anything of the sort. I've never seen any indication of that."
Whether this adds fuel to the furor that Komen's sharp move to the right was precipitated by new addition Karen Handel, as has been widely speculated, Kamin declines to surmise.
What does remain clear is this: Both organizations have done immense good at the local level in providing health care to women who are underserved and uninsured. Both depend on the support of donors and volunteers.
And when two national organizations that purport to share the same mission — promoting women's health — publicly duke it out and condemn each other over the decision of a few high-ranking individuals, it's the women both organizations serve that suffer.
So if you find yourself (in this young woman's opinion, understandably) disgusted by the national pink-washing wielded by Susan G. Komen national, don't buy that pink New Balance hoodie. But don't drop your Houston race registration, either.
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