Komen Cancels Fundraiser Over Low Attendance, Docs Reveal Catholic Church Pressure Over Planned Parenthood

It’s been two months since the Susan G. Komen organization was broadly sanctioned in the court of public opinion for its brief and ill-considered decision to defund women’s health organization Planned Parenthood over the issue of abortion, and it seems the charity has not yet been forgiven for their transgression among women who used to support Komen.

According to the New Yorker, Komen announced via email yesterday that its annual gala was being indefinitely postponed, probably due to the fact no one wants to be publicly linked with the still smarting charity. An affiliate confirmed to the magazine that Komen “decided to postpone [their] new spring event, the Awards Gala, to a later date because [they] were not certain about [their] ability to fundraise in the near term.”

As Komen tries to regroup and repair its public image, Reuters broke a story about past ongoing pressure from religious sources on the charity to delink from Planned Parenthood. The news service reviewed internal documents from Komen cataloging pressure from the Catholic Church to disassociate with Planned Parenthood due to the abortion issue, and Reuters spoke with Bishop Leonard Paul Blair of Toledo, Ohio, who confirmed the church’s role in leaning on Komen. Blair said:

“From a moral point of view, and that’s what this is about, it has to do with cooperation and doing things contrary to the church’s teaching… In today’s world, there are a lot of entanglements of many things and one has to exercise a certain prudence about standing firm on principle and church teaching and the moral conscience.”

Officials from Komen declined to comment on the organization’s relationship with the Catholic Church.