Karen Handel’s fight with Planned Parenthood

I haven’t written about the race to fill a vacant House of Representatives seat from Georgia, because WORLD almost never gets involved in state- or district-level election fights. Last night, though, Karen Handel made it into a June 20 runoff for a congressional seat in Georgia, and it’s worth mentioning what she said when I interviewed the former Georgia secretary of state five years ago, just after she left her position as senior vice president of Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

Her Democratic opponent, Jon Ossoff, has an interesting background as a documentary filmmaker and might do well in Congress, so it’s not for me to say who the better candidate is—but Handel five years ago showed she has guts. She explained why Planned Parenthood struck back after Komen decided to stop giving it money. (Komen, with its breast cancer specialization, did not want to be in bed with an organization devoted to abortion that doesn’t even offer mammograms. Planned Parenthood just tells women where to go to get one.)

Handel had thought there could be a peaceful breakup, particularly because the $680,000 that Komen sent the organization was a miniscule part of its $1 billion budget—but: “All of us underestimated the visceral, very political response that Planned Parenthood was going to take … 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.”

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?”

Since Planned Parenthood, under pressure, regularly dons sheep’s clothing, it’s great that Handel calls a wolf a wolf.

So 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.”

Since Planned Parenthood, under pressure, regularly dons sheep’s clothing, it’s great that Handel calls a wolf a wolf. Some WORLD readers who live in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District will vote for Handel and others will vote for Ossoff, but I suspect all will see evidence of Planned Parenthood’s desire to keep out of Congress someone who has seen firsthand the abortion empire’s true nature.