Karen Handel, a senior vice president for public policy at the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation and the woman widely viewed as having pressured Komen to sever financial ties with Planned Parenthood, has resigned. The only question is why it took so long.
In a whiny, self-serving letter, the woman who engineered this public relations disaster says that she is declining the offer of a severance package from Komen which might have required her to keep silent:
“I am deeply disappointed by the gross mischaracterizations of the strategy [to end its relationship with Planned Parentood], its rationale, and my involvement in it. . . . Neither the decision nor the changes themselves were based on anyone’s political beliefs or ideology. Rather, both were based on Komen’s mission and how to better serve women, as well as a realization of the need to distance Komen from controversy. I believe that Komen, like any other nonprofit organization, has the right and the responsibility to set criteria and highest standards for how and to whom it grants.”
Being charitable, Handel is not outright lying but to believe that political beliefs had no place in the Planned Parenthood decision is to believe that the tooth fairy causes breast cancer.