A defeat for Planned Parenthood

WORLD Digital reported on Wednesday Karen Handel’s victory in the most expensive race for a U.S. House of Representatives seat ever. Here’s the rest of the story: Her Democratic opponent for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, Jon Ossoff, spent more than she did, with particular help from Planned Parenthood, which threw $734,760 at his failed campaign, so her win is a big loss for the big abortion provider.

Five years ago, Handel left her position as senior vice president of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation after she tried to stop Komen’s donations to Planned Parenthood. Handel thought there could have been a peaceful breakup between the two organizations, particularly because the $680,000 Komen sent Planned Parenthood was a miniscule part of the abortion giant’s $1 billion budget—but, she told me, “All of us underestimated the visceral, very political response that Planned Parenthood was going to take.”

Handel, when I interviewed her five years ago, explained that Planned Parenthood engaged in “a vicious full-on assault across multiple channels. It wasn’t just in the press. It was against Komen’s donors. Corporate contributors to Komen were seeing their Facebooks completely raided. They were being picketed. CEOs were getting phone calls and emails. Twitter exploded with some of the most vile and vicious things that you can imagine.”

Handel explained that Komen capitulated: “[It] was simply a breast cancer organization facing Mafia-style shakedown tactics by Planned Parenthood holding Komen hostage. Komen did not have the bandwidth to fight that.” In the process, Handel “saw the truly liberal, pro-abortion bias within the press, the idea that women’s rights equals abortion rights. We had better take notice of what happened: If Planned Parenthood can do what it did to an organization like Komen, what is it willing to do next?”

Handel resigned from Komen but did not blame the organization for giving in to “guerrilla campaigning and guerrilla tactics like Planned Parenthood unleashed on Komen. … This was never about the fight against breast cancer for Planned Parenthood. What it was about, remains about, is the fight to advance Planned Parenthood’s agenda. And they sucked Komen into the middle of it, and they used them in all of this. It’s a disgrace.”

Planned Parenthood did not want to have in Congress a woman who has seen firsthand the abortion empire’s true nature. But Karen Handel won: one small defeat for Planned Parenthood, one large leap for defending human life.