Charity walks and runs are big business. Who doesn’t love a fun event, even if we’re out of shape? Walking or running for a good cause makes us feel good. Relay for Life and Making Strides Against Breast Cancer, products of the American Cancer Society (ACS), however, may be ones you reconsider. They might be more appropriately named Relay for Abortion and Taking Back Strides Against Breast Cancer, as we’ve been reading more and more of the anti-life stances the ACS takes in order to promote life for some. Not dissimilar to the Susan G. Komen Foundation practice of giving money to Planned Parenthood, the ACS has done this and more.
However, the anti-life actions of the ACS go beyond some Planned Parenthood support. Sometimes we equate Planned Parenthood with abortion. While it’s the number one provider in our nation, by no means is this the only enemy of LIFE. Another major life issue today is the use of embryonic stem cell research, in which human embryos are used for research instead of being given a chance to develop into life, and it’s here that the ACS has its hands bloody as well.
For an in-depth and detailed analysis of the various ways in which ACS is acting with anti-life agendas, please click here for an accurate and well-cited report from American Life League. The summary of the ALL list is this:
The American Cancer Society is not considered a pro-life organization for the following reasons:
1. Support for human embryonic stem cell research
2. Grant funding at facilities known prominently for human embryonic stem cell research
3. Grant funding for morally questionable research
4. Grant funding to Planned Parenthood
5. Referrals to Planned Parenthood as a health information/education resource
6. Donations to the Lance Armstrong LiveStrong Global Cancer Campaign (see entry for LiveStrong)
7. Failure to acknowledge the link between previously induced abortion and risk for breast cancer
8. Suggested fertility options including IVF, embryo freezing, egg/sperm donation and surrogacy
The problem with agencies like ACS is that we don’t want to speak out against places helping people with cancer. Cancer is evil. It kills people prematurely.
And so does abortion.
It behooves us to call these research agencies to accountability because no life can be considered more valuable than another in the name of saving lives. We continue to trumpet the very real link between induced abortion and breast cancer, one of the things we would hope the ACS would be working to fight against, as well as the ethical problems with playing God by playing with human embryos.
As ALL cites in its article, a simple search of the ACS site with the words Planned Parenthood yields many results with ties to the abortion giant.
ACS, by its very name, has a nice connection—an organization wanting to eradicate cancer is good, but not if it compromises other forms of life to do so.
And in a dark reflection of the Komen Race for the Cure, we see the ACS Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk, where corporate sponsors help support these research funds. According to the ACS: “The companies below are supporting Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walks and the American Cancer Society’s efforts to end breast cancer forever. They have developed distinctive programs and products to get their customers and communities involved in raising awareness and raising funds to fight breast cancer.”
Parenting with ACS are many retailers heralding pink ribbons, as we are used to seeing with Komen as well. You can find a list of ACS corporate sponsors on [its] own website here.
Some of these include H&M, Lowes, Paul Mitchell, Lee (jeans and clothing), Pampered Chef, and the NFL, which has a massive pink campaign underway with its merchandising that benefits ACS. If you support LIFE and ethical LIFE research, you may want to read further on ACS before you buy some of your favorite NFL merchandise this fall.
[Recently] the Komen Foundation filled the news headlines again as its top leaders, embroiled in the Planned Parenthood funding controversy for the last nine months, finally announced their resignations. In December, when a Bible publisher ignorantly partnered with Komen, we broke the story that the Bibles were helping to support abortion. Immediately the publishers pulled the mistake from the shelves, but it wasn’t but a few weeks later when Komen stopped funding Planned Parenthood—for three days while the Planned Parenthood mafia mentality went to work—that the PR debacle was complete and Komen would never be the same again.
All because it gave money to an abortion provider.
That’s the bottom line, really, and what ACS should take note of now. While Komen had some other controversies, the one that pushed it over the top and split [the] nation was the one about the $700K or so it was giving to the nation’s number one provider of abortions. The argument that it was only for breast cancer screenings didn’t hold water because money is fungible, and any money given to a place that perpetuates evil, even for purposes of good, immediately frees up more money [for] the evil work. Killing babies is evil, even when you cover posters in pink and call it “women’s health care.” And America saw enough of that in this drama to back off.
What happened with Komen should be a lesson to other places [that] are getting their hands red with the bloodshed of the preborn who are killed. The American Cancer Society should take note now. And so should its corporate sponsors.
Once again, we’d like to remind you, as we did with Komen, that there are many places doing cancer research that are worthy of money and don’t compromise LIFE to do so. Choose those places. Choose LIFE.
Left on the street in war-torn Palestine as a baby, Susan Tyrrell was taken to a Catholic orphanage in Bethlehem where she was adopted at the age of six months by a single American woman. Since 2008, she’s been speaking on issues of abortion and adoption. Her desire is to see the Church become a greater picture of the family of God through adoption—both natural and spiritual. Susan lives in Kansas City and works with the International House of Prayer with intercessory research to help with informed intercession.
This article has been reprinted with permission and can be found at http://bound4life.com/blog/2012/08/13/relay-for-abortion-what-the-american-cancer-society-can-learn-from-the-komen-crisis/.