Sarah Kliff of The Washington Post gives credit where
credit is due:
After the Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure’s
decision to defund Planned Parenthood, attention has focused on
its Vice President for Policy, Karen Handel. She joined the group
last January after a failed run for governor in Georgia, where she
had
advocated defunding Planned Parenthood.
But there’s another woman who deserves equal credit: Americans
United for Life President Charmaine Yoest. It’s her group that
issued a report last fall, “The
Case for Investigating Planned Parenthood,” that led to a
probe by the Energy and Commerce Committee. And it’s that
investigation that puts Planned Parenthood in violation of Komen’s
new policy that bars funding of groups under investigation.
Stipulate that Kliff is probably a liberal who disapproves
of the Komen Foundation’s decision, but she is correct in citing
Yoest’s work with Americans United for Life that
encouraged members of Congress to launch the first-ever
federal probe of Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer-funded
operations.
In July, Yoest
organized a Capitol Hill press conference where leading
pro-life House Republicans — including New Jersey Rep. Chris
Smith, Illinois Rep. Randy Hultgren and North Carolina Rep. Renee
Ellmers — hailed the AUL report as “a blueprint” for a
congressional investigation of Planned Parenthood’s misconduct. And
six months later, the Komen Foundation’s defunding is a direct
result of that investigation.
Many important facts are being overlooked amid the liberal media
noise (e.g., “Uproar
as Komen Foundation Cuts Money to Planned Parenthood,”)
but among that forest of ignored facts, no one should
fail to recognize Yoest’s role as an effective leader of the
pro-life movement in this battle.
