Michelle Heitzinger, executive director of the South Central Wisconsin Komen affiliate (ie, Madison), recently gave a talk about the Komen-Planned Parenthood flap. Listen to Heitzinger describe herself as a recovering Catholic who "loves" Planned Parenthood here.
Registrations for Saturday’s Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Madison are down 25 percent from last year, raising concerns that fundraising figures will drop, too.
Race officials say they don’t know how much blame to place on a controversy involving Planned Parenthood, noting that a difficult economy has hurt many fundraising efforts.
The national Komen organization announced in January it would no longer fund breast cancer-related services provided by Planned Parenthood. It quickly reversed itself after a national outcry.
“It’s really hard to say what the impact has been in our community because we don’t have any money funding Planned Parenthood in Wisconsin,” said Michelle Heitzinger, executive director of the South Central Wisconsin Komen affiliate.
Planned Parenthood in Wisconsin did not apply for Komen grants, so none of the three Komen Wisconsin affiliates is currently funding the organization, Heitzinger said. She was among affiliate officials who opposed the national Komen organization’s decision to defund Planned Parenthood.
A quick Google search turned up a similar situation across the country — Seattle; Washington, DC; Minnesota; Salt Lake City, Utah; Tuscon; and others. Some of these cities — Madison and Seattle, for example — are notably more liberal (and more apt to support Komen in wake of the Planned Parenthood funding fiasco) than others, such as Tuscon, AZ.
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