Senator Coons joined 25 of his Senate colleagues on Thursday in penning a letter to Nancy Brinker, Founder and CEO of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, urging her to reconsider her organization’s decision to stop funding cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood, a trusted provider of health care for women and men.
Twenty percent of all women in the U.S. have visited a Planned Parenthood health center, where more than 90 percent of the services provided are primary and preventative including wellness exams and cancers screenings.
“It would be tragic if any woman — let alone thousands of women — lost access to these potentially life-saving screenings because of a politically motivated attack,” the Senators wrote.
Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation funds have saved countless lives. In 2011 alone, grants from the foundation provided Planned Parenthood with roughly $650,000 in funding for breast cancer prevention, screening, and education. Komen funding for Planned Parenthood has provided nearly 170,000 clinical breast exams and resulted in 6,400 referrals for mammograms.
The letter is below: