Give the ultimate credit for this decision to Lila Rose and Live Action.  While the Susan G. Komen Foundation made the decision to halt grants to Planned Parenthood because of Congressional investigations into its activities — especially in defying legal requirements to report child abuse — those investigations got started because of the investigative work done by Live Action and the intense follow-up from many more pro-life organizations:

After years of protests and criticism from pro-life advocates, the biggest breast cancer organization, Susan G. Komen for the Cure has announced it is halting further grants and donations to the Planned Parenthood.

Figures from August directly from the Komen for the Cure foundation show 18 affiliates of the breast cancer charity gave a total of more than $569,000 to the Planned Parenthood abortion business in 2010. That was down from the $731,303 Komen officials publicly confirmed in October 2010, when they acknowledged that 20 of the 122 Komen affiliates gave to Planned Parenthood during the 2009 fiscal year.

Now, Komen says it is halting all grants because of public pressure from pro-life groups and due to the impending investigation in Congress of the Planned Parenthood abortion business.

The policy makes it so no further Planned Parenthood grants will be given unless the investigation results in Planned Parenthood’s favor.

According to Fox News, Komen spokeswoman Leslie Aun said “the cutoff results from the charity’s newly adopted criteria barring grants to organizations that are under investigation by local, state or federal authorities. According to Komen, this applies to Planned Parenthood because it’s the focus of an inquiry launched by Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., seeking to determine whether public money was improperly spent on abortions.”

And this is not temporary, either, at least not if one takes the Komen Foundation statement at face value:

Austin Ruse, the president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (CFAM) tells LifeNews that the AP report is wrong and that the Komen funding is not a temporarily decision based solely on the fact that Planned Parenthood is under investigation at the federal and state level.

He told LifeNews.com that the official Komen statement announcing the decision does not mention that it is conditioned based on the results of the Congressional investigation and that it not a temporary change based on a change in how grants are allocated — pointing to the sentence in the Komen statement saying, “We also implemented more stringent eligibility and performance criteria to support these strategies.

“What you take from the Komen statement is that it is about a change in funding criteria which does not rely on the success or failure of an investigation. You can infer from this that the decision is long-standing and not temporary,” Ruse says. “Pro-lifers should be happy today that Planned Parenthood gets yet another black-eye. Susan G. Komen Foundation should be congratulated for making this important decision.”

The key in the Komen decision is the grant criteria it uses to make grants. That has changed from “pass-through” grants, which allowed agencies like Planned Parenthood to receive grants that allowed it to make referrals for women to receive mammograms from other agencies to outcome based programs. (Planned Parenthood does not perform mammograms at any of its centers across the United States, something Komen has acknowledged). This reportedly has the effect of ending Planned Parenthood funding even if the Congressional probe finds Planned Parenthood free of any wrongdoing.

That’s why this goes beyond the Congressional investigation over abortion funding.  Several states have opened investigations into Planned Parenthood activities after Live Action’s sting operations show clinic workers actively attempting to hide cases which the law required to be reported to the state, in order to protect children from sexual abuse.  Others show nurses instructing patients about how to lie to judges.  Planned Parenthood has become politically toxic, and the Komen Foundation hardly needs that kind of baggage from its grant recipients.

Needless to say, Planned Parenthood isn’t terribly happy about this, and predicts dire consequences:

Planned Parenthood, in an email to its supporters, is putting the blame squarely on pro-life groups.

“I wanted to share some extremely discouraging news from a partner and longtime ally for women’s health — news that could have devastating consequences for women,” Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards writes to top supporters of the abortion business in an email LifeNews received. “The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation has announced that it will stop supporting lifesaving breast cancer screening for low-income and underserved women at Planned Parenthood health centers.”

“It’s a deeply disappointing decision — made even more alarming because politically motivated groups and individuals determined to undermine women’s access to care appear to have successfully intimidated the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation to withdraw this critical support,” she said. “But when anti-choice groups began criticizing the Komen Foundation for partnering with Planned Parenthood, the foundation ended its support for Planned Parenthood health centers. We know our opponents put their ideology over women’s health and lives. What we never expected is that an ally like the Komen Foundation would choose to listen to them.”

The email asks for an “emergency donation” to the abortion business to replace the donations Komen sent.

Funny — from our perspective, it looked like Planned Parenthood was putting both its ideology and its revenue ahead of both the health and lives of its underage customers, in states all across the nation.  From Congress, it looks like Planned Parenthood was putting public money into abortions.  The Komen Foundation had little choice but to recognize reality.

Kudos to the courageous Lila Rose, Live Action, and the pro-life organizers who put Congress’ feet to the fire on Planned Parenthood funding.