The award comes as a result of ABC's "10-month-long investigation of the murder of Peace Corps volunteer Kate Puzey, and of an alleged 'blame the victim' culture within the Peace Corps in which whistleblowers were not protected and women were made to feel responsible for being sexually assaulted."

We commend ABC for pursuing what is so often an unpopular journalistic topic: sexual assault and violence against women. 

"The media industry has always been a difficult place for women to climb into the senior ranks, but according to a new report by the The Women’s Media Center, the gender gap shows no signs of closing."

The article, written by Jenny Uechi, goes on to list some key statistics regarding women's representation in various media forms.

See this NPR article for additional coverage of our report. "The Contraception Mandate: Where Are The Women?" discusses the gender disparity in the current debate over women's reproductive rights in the political sphere. 

NPR columnist Edward Schumacher-Matos writes, "Let me know if you see something I don't see concerning gender and NPR." It's great to see such a respected media organization concerned with their own representation of women's voices.

The Knight Center for Journalism has also covered our report in their post, "Women still underrepresented in U.S. media, annual report shows," which asserts "The U.S. media industry still is dominated by men."

It's great to see our report receving critical attention!

"This week," she writes, "the Women's Media Center released its annual report on the state of women in the nation's newsrooms, radio stations, and film sets." She then cites the promising statistic that "In 2011, women held 40.5 percent of newspaper jobs, compared to the 36.6 percent they occupied in 2010." However, "the bad news" is that  "By almost every other measure, media remains overwhelmingly male, and it's getting maler."

Hess chastises media organizations that claim to seek and hire only "the best person for the job" and proceed to hire only "white men named Mike" (this was her personal experience). The reality, she asserts, is that "if we are all truly hiring the best person for the job, it means that we think that men are better."

The Women's Media Center is proud to be inspring journalists to speak up about the imbalance of women's presence and voices in media. After all, writes Hess, "It's easy to hide behind that old journalistic convention of objectivity, but when your 'unbiased' hiring strategy results in the systematic underrepresentation of women, something very biased is going on." Well said.

Wolfe discussed rape as a tool of war and answered Moncrieff's insightful questions concerning victims of abuse as well as possible solutions to this global crisis. 

The bill was the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the president Bill Clinton, the date February 5, 1993. What the FMLA guaranteed wasn’t on a grand scale—eligible workers can take up to 12 weeks unpaid leave to care for themselves, a new child, or a seriously ill child, parent or married spouse.

What was grand was that those covered were guaranteed to have a job to come back to and continuation of health insurance while on leave, if their employer provided such insurance.

Since its implementation six months later, the FMLA has been used more than 100 million times. Women have been able to take time to heal from childbirth. Men and women have used it to bond with a newborn or newly adopted or foster child, recover or help a parent or kid recover from a serious illness, sit by the side of a child dying from cancer.

Back in 1993, activists who’d worked eight years for this reform celebrated wildly. Twice the bill had been vetoed by the first President Bush. We knew it needed to be expanded—right now it covers only half the workforce, has an unrealistic definition of family, and is unaffordable for many. We expected those changes to follow.

I was one of 12 people appointed by Congress in 1995 to a commission to study the impact of the FMLA on employers and employees. We issued a major report showing that the bill had been a boon to workers without being a burden to employers. And even though the group was evenly divided between those who’d worked to pass FMLA and those who’d tried to stop it, we unanimously agreed that more needed to be done and encouraged states to experiment with forms of family leave insurance.

Nearly two decades later, two states have finally done so—California and New Jersey—thanks to the work of broad state coalitions. A third, Washington, has passed paid parental leave but implementation has been delayed.

As for the provisions of the FMLA itself, only minor adaptations have been made, almost all in the last two years. The most significant was ensuring use by family of military personnel who needed time off at the time of deployment or to care for an injured soldier. Just recently First Lady Michelle Obama announced proposed rulemaking for these new uses of FMLA, including one that would extend it for up to five years after a service member has left the military.

Same-sex partners who are not biological parents can now use FMLA to care for a new baby, thanks to an administrative interpretation by the Department of Labor last year that said they’re included in the phrase “in loco parentis” (in the place of a parent).

But those same-sex partners cannot use FMLA to care for each other. Workers in firms with under 50 employees, or those who work fewer than 25 hours a week, or who need to care for a sibling or an extended family member, are also left out.

Instead of being expanded, FMLA has been under attack. The latest version is a case before the Supreme Court that will determine whether state employees can use the law to recover from a personal illness or injury.

The legal issue involves states’ sovereign immunity from being sued in federal court for monetary damages. But the real issue in the case, Coleman v. Maryland Court of Appeals, boils down to this:  does the FMLA cover Daniel Coleman—and millions of other state workers—when they use it to care not for a family member but for themselves?

Daniel Coleman, was working for a Maryland court when he became ill and his doctor ordered bed rest. Within hours of requesting leave, Coleman was fired. He filed a lawsuit alleging a violation of the FMLA. The lower courts agreed with his employer, the state of Maryland, that the state could not be sued for monetary damages under the FMLA’s self-care provision.

Eight years ago, the state of Nevada made a similar argument when an employee named William Hibbs was fired after taking FMLA leave to care for his ailing wife. The Supreme Court in that case ruled that FMLA was enacted by Congress under its Fourteenth Amendment power to address unconstitutional discrimination, and does cover states in the area of family care.

Having to fight this battle all over again over the self-care provision is outrageous. Let’s hope that the justices get it right, so that the millions of state employees in this country don’t have to worry that following doctor’s orders could cost them their job.

Meanwhile, our coalitions will work hard to make sure that this protection applies to all workers.

Ellen Bravo is a SheSource expert.  If you are a journalist and are interested in interviewing Ellen please contact SheSource.

I really get that.  I recall reading an article about Sandberg a few years back and thinking, “I wish I had known a woman like her when I was growing up.”  The only visible women in my 1940’s childhood were movie stars—not exactly the kind of role model I had in mind.

Powerful women have sometimes been reluctant to use their positions to speak about the importance of women in leadership, probably assuming it will affect their relationships with powerful men.  Sandberg is changing that by example.  In addition, she is attracting more women to leadership in technology fields, a place where few women stay, much less lead.  So I give her enormous kudos.

Sandberg’s message about women not “blaming men” and taking responsibility for their own careers is a legitimate one.  Encouraging women’s ambition with phrases like “lean forward” and “keep your foot to the pedal” has been a position that many of us have advocated for decades. But there’s nothing like a visible future billionaire to hammer the point home in the most visible of ways.

My only hesitation about her message is that it is about “fixing women,” a stand-alone strategy that I find exhausting and only part of the picture.  I wish Sandberg—admired by both genders—would alter her tactic and encourage men to “lean forward” as well, but for them it would be leaning forward as sponsors of worthy women.

Truthfully, I look into the world and I see that women have leaned so far forward that it’s a wonder they can still stand.  The message should not just be about our taking responsibility; it should also have a concurrent message about the accountability of organizations and (often) the men who run them as mentors and allies.

My colleagues and I, without blaming men, have read (and written) scores of books, created institutions, and had training (and trained others) in every skill of leadership.  We have led Washington marches and marched into the offices of politicians on behalf of women’s power and leadership. We have led living wage campaigns for decades and lobbied (unsuccessfully) for adequate childcare and choice—the kind of real change that women who aren’t wealthy would need if they ever expected to put the pedal to the metal.  It is not just hard work that we need: We must have essential changes in work, family and political systems if ordinary women ever expect to truly lead alongside men.

What we need is for women like Sandberg to lean ever further forward.  I love that she talks about more choices for men, like paternity leave, but I would be very grateful if she’d also talk about men “fathering” organizations that are truly fair in all their systems of hiring, sponsoring and promoting women.  There is no need to blame anyone, man or woman; we have all the data necessary for a solid business case in favor of diversity and women’s leadership.

Sandberg, beginning with Facebook, could push for women on her all-male corporate board, for instance—especially considering the high use of Facebook by females.  I know she doesn’t have total control of this, but she is the strongest advocate I can imagine for such change. 

I’m sure Sandberg’s speeches are attended by men as well as women, but I think it would be fabulous if she addressed the males in the audience directly (and maybe she does), reminding them of the need to lift as they rise—and not just to lift other men.

Pay inequality for women is also an area we still cannot ignore.  Catalyst has found that women who graduate from the most prestigious schools with MBAs make less than their male counterparts, and they rarely catch up.

Most importantly, please go to the hill and lobby for comprehensive child care legislation.  I know Sandberg is an advocate for parental leave for men as well as women. But both parents struggle to work at a level that will move them forward while still staying true to their family ideals and the needs of their kids.  It is wickedly hard, and until we move legislation forward, child care will continue to be a stumbling block mostly to women rising to the highest levels in our government and our businesses.

Sandberg is one of the best champions of women in the world.  Maybe, when she’s done with Facebook, she can run for public office and make the true, permanent changes we need for the emergence of the next Sheryl Sandberg.

Marie Wilson is a SheSource expert.  If you are a journalist and are interested in interviewing Marie please contact SheSource.

Lately, At War has had a few recommendations for books to cover, one of which I am busy reading ahead of the next trip. But before writing that one up, the blog will pause today to update its blog roll and point to a new Web site worth watching: Women Under Siege.

The site went up Wednesday, along with a CNN.com opinion article written by Gloria Steinem and Lauren Wolfe. It is the online presence of a new project of the Women’s Media Center, the New York-based nonprofit.

The project will focus on how rape and sexual violence are used as a tool of war, and will advocate for means to halt these crimes where they are occurring and to prosecute those who commit them. The new site states its mission bluntly; Women Under Siege looks to be a project with an edge.

But there is another reason to visit the Web site: its original content.

Full story at http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/09/what-we-are-reading-women-under-siege/

New York, NY—Today, the Women’s Media Center launched its new website with the announcement that fourteen-year-old Redmond, Washington resident Adora Svitak,14, the winner of the first annual Girls’ State of the Union Video Contest.

The Girls’ State of the Union video contest shines a light on girls as problem solvers and media leaders.  Like the President’s State of the Union address, the Girls’ State of the Union lets girls tell us what our priorities should be.

Judges for the Women’s Media Center contest included Gloria Steinem, Carol Jenkins, Kyra Sedgwick, Marisa Tomei, and an all-star list of social media leaders.

Full story at http://blog.seattlepi.com/videoblogging/2012/02/09/redmond-teen-adora-svitak-wins-womens-media-center-girls-state-of-the-union-video-contest/

What the world can do about sexual violence in conflict

It doesn't matter where you look; sexualized violence is intrinsic to conflict. Qaddafi's soldiers committed rape in the last days of Libya's regime. The Egyptian military has been sexually violating female journalists and protesters in that revolution. Across the Democratic Republic of Congo, hundreds of thousands of women are suffering the fallout of the sexualized violence that has torn apart their bodies, their families, and their communities.

A new project from the Women's Media Center, initiated by one of its founders, journalist and activist Gloria Steinem, has begun documenting this tool of war and genocide. From the Holocaust through today, Women Under Siege is illuminating the causes as well as the cures of sexualized violence by uncovering patterns and making links between them.

As the director of Women Under Siege, as well as a journalist myself, I interviewed Steinem about sexualized violence in conflict and what needs to be done to understand and stop it.

What are some of the reasons rape is so prevalent in war?

First, it's important to note that rape and war didn't always go together. For instance, European colonists wrote astonished letters home about how "even these savages" -- by which they meant the residents of this continent they were invading -- didn't rape, not even their women prisoners. But those were wars of self-defense. If you're going to get groups of men to risk their humanity, health, and lives in wars of offense, the traditional way is not to pay them a lot, but to addict them to the "cult of masculinity." You have to convince them they're not "real men" unless they kill and conquer. And, at its most basic, "masculine" means not being "feminine." On a continuum, it means controlling women, conquering women, raping women, even with objects: bottles and broom handles in "peacetime" here, and gun barrels and knives in Bosnia or Congo. There's a reason why it's a truism that rape is not sex, it's violence.

Full story at http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/02/gloria-steinem-on-rape-in-war-its-causes-and-how-to-stop-it/252470/

(CNN) -- We first thought about starting this piece with the story of Saleha Begum, a survivor of Bangladesh's 1971 war in which, some reports say, as many as 400,000 women were raped. Begum had been tied to a banana tree and repeatedly gang raped and burned with cigarettes for months until she was shot and left for dead in a pile of women. She didn't die, though, and was able to return home, ravaged and five months pregnant. When she got home she was branded a "slut."

We also thought of starting with the story of Ester Abeja, a woman in Uganda who was forcibly held as a "bush wife" by the Lord's Resistance Army. Repeated rape with objects destroyed her insides. Her captors also made her kill her 1-year-old daughter by smashing the baby's head into a tree.

We ran through a dozen other stories of women like Begum and Abeja, and finally realized that it would be too difficult to find the right one -- the tale that would express exactly how and in what ways sexualized violence is being used as a weapon of war to devastate women and tear apart communities around the world, conflict by conflict, from Libya to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

It is because of this complexity that we must understand how sexualized violence is being used. We must understand in order to stop it -- just as, when seeking to defuse a bomb, it is crucial to know its components. Both the World Health Organization and the U.N. Security Council have recognized that there is a lack of research on the nature and extent of sexualized violence in conflict, even as there is increasing demand from U.N. bodies, donors, and others for better analysis to work toward prevention and healing.

All of this is why we have begun a new project at the Women's Media Center that breaks down the specifics of sexualized violence into areas such as its motives and patterns, its fallout, and the gender and cultural attitudes that may have led to it. We're calling our project Women Under Siege, because with four women being raped every five minutes in Congo alone, we can say it is nothing less than that -- an ongoing siege. And it's time we began to put an end to it.

Full story at http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/08/opinion/steinem-wolfe-rape-war/index.html

Last week, I wrote about the controversy surrounding the new film In the Land of Blood and Honey. Though the merits of the film are up for debate, the film (and the discussion surrounding it) brings to light a very important issue that is often ignored — sexualized violence in times of war and conflict. While In the Land of Blood and Honey may be a good first step in raising awareness about the prevalence of such violence, human rights organizations must also be a greater emphasis on public education and advocacy regarding this critical issue. Fortunately, a new project from the Women’s Media Center has just arrived to fill this void.

Today is the launch of Women Under Siege, a project with the mission of “documenting how rape and other kinds of sexualized violence are used as tools in genocide and conflict throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.” By exploring the ways in which sexualized violence has been used as a weapon during times of genocide or conflict, Women Under Siege will play a significant role in educating people about sexualized violence and developing strategies to prevent such violence in future conflicts.

Full story at http://www.genderacrossborders.com/2012/02/08/womens-media-center-launches-women-under-siege/

This week, Norma Andrade, a well-known women’s rights activist in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, was attacked. Her face was slashed as she walked her grandchild to school in Mexico City, just two months after she survived being shot near her home. Andrade’s offense that has drawn such violence against her? In 2001, she founded May Our Daughters Return Home after one of her daughters was killed – a crime that remains unsolved.

Femicide and violence against women have reached epic proportions in Mexico and Central America, making the reality very near impossible to ignore. In December, the Peace Corps made the decision to pull volunteers out of El Salvador, and to stop sending new volunteers to Guatemala and Honduras – a strong statement on just how bad things have gotten.

....

Last month, the Nobel Women’s Initiative led a delegation of 20 journalists and advocates – including Nobel Laureates Rigoberta Menchu and Jody Williams – to Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico to meet women like Norma Andrade and many others, with stories of sexualized violence and abuse, and names far less known.The group held press conferences and meetings, hosted by local women’s rights groups, to bear witness to the pain and suffering, but also the fierce efforts of activists there (defensoras) working to counteract what must seem like a tidal wave of odds against them. “Our purpose was really to listen,” says Lauren Wolfe, a member of the delegation. “In each country, we meet with about 50 women, and listened to their stories of their own rapes, of their sisters’ murders, or their family members’ disappearances.”

For these women to risk their safety to attend these meetings, the importance of simply telling their stories must have been tremendous. Nearly all asked that their names and images not be used, and some requested that, even despite anonymity, their stories not be repeated for fear of repercussions, says Wolfe. One woman was beaten by police upon approaching the gathering, and showed up with a black eye. As she left, Wolfe said, she was again picked up by the police and thrown in jail. The freedom to speak about abuses is in as much jeopardy as women's rights themselves.

While many of the stories gathered can be found on the Nobel Women’s Initiative website, many will find a home at Women Under Siege, a brand new initiative launched today, which Wolfe will direct. An innovative effort of the Women’s Media Center, Women Under Siege aims to broadly publicize – in the hopes of combating – violence against women, serving as a megaphone for the voices of survivors themselves and a clearinghouse for their recorded experiences. It will feature personal accounts from the likes of photojournalist Lynsey Addario, reporter Lara Logan, and survivors from Bangladesh to Bosnia, and Darfur to Democratic Republic of Congo.

Full story at http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/02/07/megaphone-survivor-hopeful-lever-change-women-under-siege-launches-today-0

Outrage over history's failure to acknowledge the devastating legacy of sexual violence in conflict zones has inspired a brilliant new online project.

It took generations for the extent of sexual violence against Jewish women in the Holocaust to be fully documented in a book published just over a year ago – a period of time which horrified activist and journalist Gloria Steinem who said: "Why had it taken 65 years to reveal these facts. Why were they ignored at Nuremberg? If we'd known, might it have helped prevent rape camps in the former Yugoslavia? Or rape as a weapon of genocide in the Congo?"

Her outrage has directly inspired a brilliant new website, womenundersiegeproject.com, which launched this week and aims to document sexual violence as a tool of war. In an interview with the project's new director Lauren Wolfe, Steinem explains the thinking behind the site, which allows victims of sexual violence to bear witness: "For me, inspiration comes from seeing positive results. For instance, a woman survivor of brutal rape in the Congo is rejected by her family, but learns she's not alone or at fault from the story of a Jewish woman who survived rape and the Holocaust only to be shunned as if she had collaborated. Each example illuminates another."

Full story at http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/the-womens-blog-with-jane-martinson/2012/feb/09/rape-conflict-weapon-war

Upon the launch of Women Under Siege, traditional and new media alike highlighted the project.  Below is a selection of those articles:

• The Guardian: “Why has it taken 65 years to recognise that rape is a weapon of war?”

• The New York Times: “What We Are Reading: Women Under Siege”

• Women in the World Foundation (Newsweek/Daily Beast):  "Women Under Siege: A new website illuminates women's experience of sexualized violence in conflict"

• RH Reality Check: "The Launch of "Women Under Siege:" A Journalistic Megaphone For Victims of Sexual Violence"

• Gender Across Borders Blog: "Women’s Media Center Launches 'Women Under Siege'"

• The Political Notebook: "Raising Awareness about Rape and Sexual Assault in Wartime: An Interview with Lauren Wolfe, Journalist and Director of Women Under Siege"

• Poynter: "Addario: While covering rape in Congo, ‘I was openly weeping during interviews’"

• CNN.com: "Can we end rape as tool of war?"

• The Atlantic: "Gloria Steinem on Rape in War, Its Causes, and How to Stop It"

• Nobel Women’s Initiative blog: "Women Under Siege-New web site!"

• Gunpowder & Lead: "Rape Is Not An Inevitability of War"

• Nieman Reports: "Women Under Siege" featured on homepage

"The feminist icon became the outspoken leader of the women’s liberation movement in the late 1960s and the 1970s."

Check out the story and video here.

Check out the awesome trailer–which include soundbites from WMC Co-Founder Gloria Steinem–here. 

They're offering cool incentives to donate, including signed DVDs, T-shirts, toys and posters!

Regardless of Karen Handel’s statement to the media it should be clear that she had to resign because she seriously damaged Komen Foundation’s reputation. After having driven Komen’s reputation off a cliff, Handel continues to insist that her work was not at fault and that her decision to change Komen’s grant-making policies to specifically exclude Planned Parenthood was the correct one to make. This is a delusion belied by the public’s reaction to her politicizing the Komen Foundation’s great work. Handel’s personal politics aside, it was her work for the Komen Foundation that was a failure for the organization, which is why she rightly resigned. 

We hope with Handel’s resignation the Komen Foundation will no longer allow the ideological leanings of individuals to get in the way of their greater mission of fighting cancer and that they will continue to listen to the public’s insistence that Planned Parenthood’s work is part of that mission. 

–Julie Burton, Women’s Media Center President

Baumann cites critics who say that “it would be next to impossible to prove that an abortion was obtained on the basis of race or gender” and that the provision “could lead to nuisance suits against abortion providers by family members who are opposed to abortion on principle.”

Aside from the blatant infringement on the reproductive right of women to determine the course of their own pregnancy, this bill, in the words of Loretta Ross of SisterSong, tries to “hijack the civil rights legacy in the service of conservative causes…to appropriate the mantle of the civil rights movement in a really despicable way.”

Coopting the message of the Civil Rights Movement, the “prenatal discrimination bill” resists any discussion of abortion as connected to public health and institutional racism in favor of an oversimplified, factually inaccurate portrait of black children as “an endangered species.” Read the full article here.

“If this were just about Planned Parenthood,” she writes, “or yet another battle over abortion, the outrage would be dissipating.”

The reality, however, is that “women saw enough red to get over the pink” and are in no place to forgive the Komen Foundation any time soon.  “The American Association of University Women cancelled plans to incorporate a Race for the Cure into their National Conference for College Women Leaders” and they haven’t changed their minds even after the Komen Foundation’s apology and semi-retraction of their decision.

Feldt views this public refusal to forgive the foundation as a step towards a stronger feminist solidarity. “Embracing our power,” she writes, “is how to overcome the shaming and false allegations toward women’s human right to make their own childbearing decisions and reproductive health services that have saved the lives of everyday women, pro-life in the largest sense of that word.” Check out the full article here.

Gloria Steinem met with students at Columbia College on Tuesday, to share the story of America’s road to gender equality. As CBS 2′s Vince Gerasole reports, Steinem said it’s a road we’re still traveling.

Full story at http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/02/07/feminist-icon-gloria-steinem-keeping-up-the-fight-for-equality/

Swissler reaches back in time and reminds readers that the Komen Foundation “helped block a meaningful Patients Bill of Rights for the women it has purported to serve since the group began in 1982.” Quoting Judy Brady of the Toxic Links Coalition, Swissler also points out that the Komen Foundation tends to focus solely on medical advances, rather than lifestyle and environmental factors:

“‘There’s no talk about prevention, except, in terms of lifestyle, your diet for instance. No talk about ways to grow food more safely. No talk about how to curb industrial carcinogens. No talk about contaminated water or global warming.’”

Swissler’s article asks whether the Komen Foundation’s decision to defund Planned Parenthood might merely represent business as usual and not a radical shift in ideology. Read the full article here.

–Julie Burton, Women’s Media Center President

The Komen Foundation provides an important voice and services in the movement to find a cure for breast cancer. We applaud them for this work but are troubled by the foundation’s public explanation that the decision to cease funding Planned Parenthood had nothing to do with abortion politics.

Since 2005, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) and STOPP (most recently known as the Society To Outlaw Planned Parenthood), have pushed a very public campaign aimed at ending Komen Foundation funding of Planned Parenthood services for breast cancer screening.  Dr. John Willke, a former President of the National Right to Life Committee has promoted a STOPP research report about the Komen Foundation support of Planned Parenthood (http://www.lifeissues.org/AbortionBreastcancer/komen/fact_sheet.pdf).  In October, 2011, Carol Tobias, the President of the National Right to Life Committee, wrote a column for Legatus Magazine that criticized the Komen Foundation with sentences like, “Komen’s support of the nation’s largest abortion provider is ironic in that, while Komen works to find a cure for breast cancer, Planned Parenthood is providing a “service” that contributes to the increase of breast cancer.” [NOTE:  According to the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health, over 100 of the world's leading experts have concluded that having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman's subsequent risk of developing breast cancer Summary Report: Early Reproductive Events and Breast Cancer Workshop]

The National Right to Life Committee was originally created by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the President of the National Right to Life Committee has a platform and megaphone that extends far beyond the NRLC federation of 50 state right-to-life organizations and 3,000 local chapters nationwide.  In light of the public campaign against the Komen Foundation by the anti-choice movement, it is difficult to understand how the decision by the Komen Foundation is not related to abortion politics.

From a media perspective, the enormous outcry by women everywhere on Twitter, Facebook and blogs indicates the Foundation’s media team and leadership miscalculated the public’s reaction to their decision. Politico reports that in a video posted yesterday, Nancy Brinker, the founder and CEO of the Komen Foundation, said that the decision had been “mischaracterized” and that “the scurrilous accusations being hurled at this organization are profoundly hurtful.” (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/72360.html)

The Women’s Media Center is a pro-choice organization and fully supports the movement to find a cure for breast cancer.

The Women’s Media Center urges the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation to respond to press inquiries about the long-time anti-choice campaign for the Komen Foundation to stop funding Planned Parenthood to clarify that there was in fact no connection between a highly orchestrated anti-choice campaign and the decision of the Komen Foundation to end its support of Planned Parenthood for breast cancer prevention, education, and screenings. The firestorm from this decision is not going to go away until the obvious links and questions are fully discussed.

–Julie Burton, Women’s Media Center President