The new president of Komen for the Cure is refusing to detail her position on abortion. That will likely only add to the furor the breast cancer charity has caused within the pro-life community — where its initial decision to de-fund Planned Parenthood and its backtracking days later cost it dearly with pro-life Americans.
As LifeNews reported, Komen has a new president and CEO. The breast cancer charity named Judith Salerno to replace founder Nancy Brinker, whose promise to her dying sister begat a fundraising powerhouse has faced significant controversy.
Brinker announced last summer she would step down following an onslaught of criticism over Komen’s quickly reversed decision to stop giving grants to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s biggest abortion business.
Now, Salerno tells The Dallas Morning News that Komen is “interested in moving the organization ahead, not looking back” and she would not disclose her position on abortion, saying her work with Komen would not touch on abortion.
“What I do with Komen, it’s about breast cancer,” Salerno said. “It’s not about abortion. They’re interested in moving the organization ahead, not looking back.”
While Salerno won’t talk about her abortion position, the newspaper indicated she has a history of supporting pro-abortion candidates — and made donations to President Barack Obama and Tim Kaine, a Democrat who won a U.S. Senate seat in Virginia last year.
She also cheered on pro-abortion Vice President Joe Biden in his debate with pro-life vice-presidential running mate Paul Ryan, saying, “Go Joe! Biden is whooping the Wonk from Wisconsin [Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan] — by telling the truth.”
Naturally, Salerno told the newspaper her political contributions have “nothing to do with what I’m doing here and what I care about. Health is not a partisan issue.”
The Komen ties with the abortion giant continue and Salerno’s past work with an agency that is responsible for the controversial HHS mandate in Obamacare will only make things worse.
Salerno headed the Institute of Medicine, which approved the Obama HHS mandate that forces religious groups to funds birth control and drugs that may cause abortions. As LifeNews reported in February 2012, the committee that made the recommendation to the Obama administration to adopt its new controversial health care mandate and found the panel is dominated by pro-abortion groups.
According to Human Life International, “Through a search of public records, HLI America has been able to substantiate the claim that members of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee who wrote Recommendation 5.5 have ideological commitments that raise serious questions about the supposed objectivity with which they considered the scientific evidence that led to their recommendation that the HHS mandate contraception and sterilization coverage as “preventive care.”
“The IOM members below have strong relationships with both Planned Parenthood and NARAL, and have actively supported pro-abortion candidates for public office,” the pro-life group adds. “This is by no means an exhaustive list of the involvement of the IOM committee members in pro-choice advocacy groups and pro-choice political campaigns. But these eleven members—out of a total of fifteen—demonstrate a more than casual commitment to the furthering of the abortion lobby.”
HLI determined that “not a single member of the committee has financially supported a pro-life candidate.”
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The Institute of Medicine recommendation, opposed by pro-life groups, called for the Obama administration to require insurance programs to include birth control — such as the morning after pill or the ella drug that causes an abortion days after conception — in the section of drugs and services insurance plans must cover under “preventative care.” The companies will likely pass the added costs on to consumers, requiring them to pay for birth control and, in some instances, drug-induced abortions of unborn children in their earliest days.
The HHS accepted the IOM guidelines that “require new health insurance plans to cover women’s preventive services” and those services include “FDA-approved contraception methods and contraceptive counseling” — which include birth control drugs like Plan B and ella that can cause abortions. The Health and Human Services Department commissioned the report from the Institute, which advises the federal government and shut out pro-life groups in meetings leading up to the recommendations.
