Karen Handel of Komen Resigns February 7, 2012, 5:08 pm When the Susan G. Komen Foundation cut off Planned Parenthood from breast cancer screening grants, it assured the press and angry donors that the decision was not political. The foundation also claimed that its new senior vice president for public policy, Karen Handel, who had railed against Planned Parenthood during her failed bid for the governor's job in Georgia, was not behind the defunding. So what to make of the fact that Ms. Handel resigned today, or of her obligatory parting interview with Fox News, which I read about on Talking Points Memo? Ms. Handel started out by blaming the victim:"The only group that made this political is Planned Parenthood," she said. But then Ms. Handel conceded that Komen had been under pressure from anti-abortion groups because of its relationship with Planned Parenthood. It's doesn't seem to matter to these groups that Planned Parenthood spends only a small fraction of its budget on abortion services, and does not use Komen funds for this purpose. Ms. Handel said Komen was "doing its best to move to more central ground" on "this kind of controversy" before she joined them. I'm not really sure what she means, unless it's that Komen was looking for political cover from the critics of Planned Parenthood before she came on the scene. Wait a second. Could that be one of the reasons Komen hired her in the first place? Nah. Ms. Handel also explained that she was "asked to look at options. I looked at it and I did. The option she chose was to follow her fellow right-wingers in their attack on one of the most important places in the country for women to get reproductive health services, and cancer screenings. The take-away is that the whole thing was political. Should I congratulate Ms. Handel for her candor, or take up a collection to buy her spinning lessons (not the cardio kind)? After a lot of bad press, the foundation reversed itself, and decided to allow Planned Parenthood to apply for future grants. But that organization remains under assault for providing abortion services. Ever since the Supreme Court recognized a woman's right to make her own decisions about her life and her health, anti-abortion forces have been doing everything in their power to prevent women from having a safe and legal medical procedure.