Former Komen exec ready to fight 'Planned Bullyhood'

Judie Brown
By Rita Diller
September 13, 2012
Reproduced with Permission

Take this, you bully! With the release of her new book, Planned Bullyhood, Karen Handel delivers a gut punch to Planned Parenthood following vicious attacks on her by the abortion giant and its allies.

Handel is the former senior vice president of public policy at Komen for the Cure. Her book tells the fascinating inside story of Komen's struggle to rid itself of the Planned Parenthood stench that plagued Komen for years. The fight climaxed at the end of January 2012 when the Associated Press released - at the behest of Planned Parenthood - an article saying Komen was pulling funding from the abortion giant.

The book details how Komen tasked Handel with "identifying options to disengage from Planned Parenthood," and then threw her under the proverbial bus when Planned Parenthood made her its target. Planned Parenthood pegged Handel, she says, as the pro-life person inside Komen who they said was solely responsible for Komen's anti-Planned Parenthood decision.

Planned Bullyhood gives valuable insight to all who are fighting Planned Parenthood, and is sure to inspire those who are being bullied and held hostage by the abortion giant to fight back.

The book shines a light inside the Komen organization in the months leading up to the decision that it would phase out the Planned Parenthood grants. It also details the events that occurred during the period after the story broke, when Komen was under intense attack. Those events ended in Komen doing a 180-degree turn and capitulating to Planned Parenthood - against Handel's advice. It details how the billion dollar abortion and social engineering business flexed its political muscle and unleashed its wrath in a premeditated, highly coordinated attack on its former ally, crying "war on women."

Prior to the decision to cease new grants to PP, Handel says that dealing with the fallout from funding the nation's largest abortion chain was taking a huge toll on Komen's ability to pursue its mission. "The Planned Parenthood issue was nearly consuming the organization. I was spending more than half of my time dealing with it," Handel says in the book.

The Planned Parenthood grants were referred to internally by Komen president Liz Thompson, Handel says, as "crappy" grants, because they were "low quality grants that were not particularly impactful." They did not meet the standards of measurable results that Komen wanted to step up to. Komen had awarded these crappy grants for at least two decades, Handel says.

She details the problems with some of the Planned Parenthood grants in the book:

The more I learned about the Planned Parenthood grants, the more I understood exactly why Komen had to change its granting strategy. One grant claimed it would save 450 women from dying of breast cancer. That is an amazing claim and one that we all wish were true. Of course, there was no way for Planned Parenthood to guarantee this as an outcome to its program.

Another Planned Parenthood chapter received grants for at least two consecutive years to fund breast evaluation and management of low-risk women between the ages of 18 and 39 in order to avoid unnecessary treatment and to minimize the burden on the healthcare system from the so-called worried well. This grant was particularly odd to me and had the smell of flowery application wording, focused more on keeping the dollars flowing than on actually addressing a real need.

Add to that the fact that Planned Parenthood had been barred from receiving state government money in several states, and Komen's own contracts required that if "an organization was debarred from receiving state or federal funds, the organization's grant would be revoked." That was a straightforward statement that left no discretion on the part of Komen, Handel says. It was in breach of its own contracts by not revoking the grants.

Komen's travail during the period after the defunding story broke, its pathetic floundering during that time, and its total reversal after a taking a thorough beating by Planned Parenthood and its allies illustrate how Planned Parenthood can effectively infiltrate, use, and then destroy an organization without an iota of remorse - if that organization does not have "the stomach for the fight."

Handel's book gives an inkling of the incredible breadth of Planned Parenthood's toxic network, and the extent to which the abortion mammoth will go when it senses it is being ostracized for its abortion business.

Anyone who followed the Komen/Planned Parenthood debacle and wondered what in the world was going on at Komen during those days when Komen was attempting to sever ties with Planned Parenthood will be fascinated to learn the details.

Planned Parenthood literally tried to destroy Komen, Handel says, even though Komen had handed PP millions of dollars in grants and some Komen executives had established what they thought were friendships with Cecile Richards and other Planned Parenthood operatives. Some Komen affiliate leaders had been PP board members in the past and vice versa. Komen thought that, because of mutual respect and friendship, it could accomplish an amicable split. But the battle that ensued showed there was no friendship or respect involved on the part of the abortion giant.

The amount of money involved in the Planned Parenthood grants - around $680,000 - was inconsequential to Planned Parenthood and to Komen. It comprised much less than one percent of the annual budget of each entity. Yet it became the battleground for a Komen bloodbath.

Contrary to Planned Parenthood claims, no woman would go without services if the Komen grants were discontinued. "Planned Parenthood didn't provide mammograms," Handel says. "Their education programs were duplicative and there was virtually no way to determine what, if any, tangible, meaningful results were achieved," she says.

Because of Planned Parenthood's incessant, merciless bullying, Komen, in the end, handed over its lunch money, allowing Planned Parenthood to say who does and does not get grants from Komen.

For her part, Handel resigned her position with Komen immediately after Komen caved so that she could tell the true story about what happened. Planned Bullyhood gives voice to her intention to stand and fight Planned Parenthood. In introductory remarks, Handel says:

This is the true story of Komen's real motives, Planned Parenthood's tactics, and my role in it all. The tyrannical leftist infrastructure - Planned Parenthood, Obama, the DNC, the media - joined forces to conduct a crushing shakedown of Komen and bully it into submission. Planned Parenthood was Obama's consigliere and the DNC's enforcer. It was Planned Bullyhood. It was planned. And it was bullying. And the bullying won't stop until it is exposed - and we stand up to it.

In closing the book, Handel is adamant:

This battle has just begun. In order for it to end in victory for the First Amendment, for freedom of association, for the freedom to choose whom and what to fund we - you and I - must find the courage to stand up to groups like Planned Parenthood. . . .

The only way to stop those who politicize the apolitical, hold hostage those who dare to disagree, and bully their way to taxpayer money is to fight back.

The question is this: Are we ready to fight back against these bullies? I am.

We applaud Karen Handel for bringing the fight to Planned Parenthood. You can order her book and donate to help distribute it to our nation's leaders before the upcoming election here.

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