Commentary: Beyond Komen, Planned Parenthood Remains Under Attack

Despite the breathtaking turnaround by the Komen foundation today on funding for Planned Parenthood, the organization remains under attack, according to Judy Norsigian, co-founder and executive director of Our Bodies Ourselves, and Ellen Shaffer, co-director of the Trust Women/Silver Ribbon Campaign, a project of the Center for Policy Analysis. In a blistering blog post today, they describe another assault on Planned Parenthood, this one by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops:

What Komen, and the evangelicals, and Republican Rep. Cliff Stearns, who launched the pointless political inquiry, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops are really mad at Planned Parenthood about is this:

Part of what they do is help people plan. Parenthood. You know. They support birth control. In some cases, they provide it. Like your corner drugstore, but better.

And this week, the bishops are howling about it because the Obama administration refused to grant a broad religious exemption to contraception coverage.

Never mind that virtually all Catholics use birth control, that the Church itself only began to oppose it in 1968, that the Pope recently conceded that condoms are useful, and approved condom use for stopping the transmission of AIDS.

Never mind that virtually all Catholic-affiliated hospitals, schools and charities cover birth control in their health plans — health plans that come out of the wages employees earn themselves.

Never mind that undergraduate and graduate students are fighting for coverage — and are still being denied, even for medical reasons.

Close to every cent the Church has not spent settling lawsuits against priests who sexually molested children has gone into this week’s media campaign to rile up opposition to covering birth control.