RCC Director John Stair and North Carolina Director Brooke McGowan expose Komen’s support of abortion in full view of the starting line. Komen balloons and pom-poms only draw attention to our presence.

Note: Posting revised November 7 to reflect new information regarding assaults on CBR staff and possible Komen harassment.

We took our message of life to the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Knoxville on October 27.  As you may be aware, Komen gives grants of nearly $1 million dollars annually to Planned Parenthood (PP), the nation’s largest abortion provider.

We were a small group of folks, enough to hold a couple of warning signs, several abortion photos, and a large sign asking the Komen Foundation to quit funding PP.  We’ll be more numerous next year, Lord willing.

CBR is just like an STD.  You get in bed with Planned Parenthood, you get us.

“Choice” signs along race course. Note parental warning sign in foreground. Some of the “Choice” signs are out of view of the camera, but rest assured they were visible to Race participants.

We didn’t interfere with their event, but our act of good faith was not reciprocated.  Several of the Komen volunteers were apparently instructed to block our signs with shakers, balloons, and the occasional body.  They succeeded only in drawing more attention to our huge pink sign (upper right photo).  We appreciate it.

One guy tried to stare me down.  Most amusing.  One young man challenged me on the fact that the Knoxville Komen affiliate doesn’t support PP.  I told him it didn’t matter where babies were being killed, they were just as dead.

I didn’t get to use the sound-byte I had prepared especially for the occasion: “CBR is just like an STD.  You get in bed with Planned Parenthood, you get us.”  Maybe next year.

As usual, we had notified the Knoxville Police Department of our intention to picket this event (link here).  They were obviously briefed to leave us alone (as long as we respected the law and did not interfere with the rights of others), which they did.

When the Race was about to begin, we deployed several signs along the route.  Komen volunteers followed our staff across the street and again attempted to shield our signs.  But again, they only succeeded in drawing attention to our message.  One woman screamed at CBR Advisory Board member Kathy Proctor that we didn’t have our facts straight, that the local group kept all their donations local, and that Komen only gave money to PP for mammograms.  She was not interested in the fact that PP does not perform mammograms.  She apparently did not hear the PA announcer say that only 75% of donations support local work.

Several Race participants ran over to yell at us.  One man ran up and screamed at about our f***ing signs and that we had no right to be there.  Another person hit one sign and tried to pull it down.  One woman said she was a Christian and she thanked us for being there.  Another said she was a Christian and was crying and yelling at us to go away.  Someone tried to hit CBR staffer Brooke McGowan on the back of her knee in an attempt to buckle her knee and make her fall.

Next year, we will bring additional volunteers with video cameras to film any criminal misconduct against CBR staff or property.  We will prosecute any criminal act to the fullest extent of the law.

Support the fight against breast cancer.  There are other organizations who fight breast cancer and do not fund abortion providers.  Georgia Right to Life recommends the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

Abortion and Breast Cancer.  Of course, the Komen Foundation’s support for Planned Parenthood is enough to warrant our presense at their fundraising events, but we also noted the very real possibility that abortion itself (indirectly funded by the Komen Foundation) causes breast cancer. FAB has noted previously that (1) there is an undeniable statistical relationship between abortion and breast cancer, and (2) the existence of a causal link between abortion and breast cancer is still a matter of debate. (Earlier this week, this article reported a new study that showed abortion to cause a 55% increase in cancer risk among Chinese women, independent of all confounding factors.)

We will leave the debate about causality to medical professionals, but we will point out that there are many in the medical community who believe there is more evidence for the link than against it.  Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, professor of surgery at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and Dr. Joel Brind, professor of human biology and endocrinology at Baruch College of the city of New York, are among those who believe that abortion increases risk of breast cancer, independent of other factors.

The ambient cancer risk among women is about 10%. If abortion increases cancer risk from 10% to only 13% (a 30% increase), we could estimate that more than 300,000 women have died from abortion-related cancer since Roe (source), which is about 8,000 women per year.