Abortion is a dirty business. Even if you believe it should be legal, it’s still a dirty business. It’s no surprise, then, that the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, which focuses on breast cancer, backed away from its financial support of  the abortion-providing Planned Parenthood. There is no reason why breast cancer funding should be mixed up in the dirty money from the practice of extinguishing unborn human life. Abortion is legal, and will probably always be legal, but it’s becoming ever more stigmatized. Good.

But the Komen foundation is taking it on the chin. From the NYT story linked to above:

News of Komen’s decision galvanized many of Planned Parenthood’s supporters. The organization had collected $400,000 in donations by mid-afternoon on Wednesday and hoped the flow would continue long enough to replace Komen’s entire annual grants of $700,000, Ms. Laguens said. Komen supporters accuse Planned Parenthood of milking Komen’s decision to generate a fund-raising bonanza.

“Why are they going nuts?” Mr. Raffaelli [the Komen president] asked rhetorically. “And the answer is that they want to raise money, and they’re doing it at the expense of a humanitarian organization that shares their goals and has given them millions of dollars over the years.”

I don’t see what the problem is here. Komen is a breast cancer organization whose good work in that area was being sullied by its involvement with the nation’s largest abortion provider. Planned Parenthood’s supporters have stepped up to fill in the financial gap. I can understand why this ticks off Planned Parenthood’s supporters, but it seems to me that Komen can better fulfill its particular mission by disassociating itself with an abortion provider — especially as the stigma against abortion (which is not the same thing as support for outlawing it) grows.

I was listening to this story on NPR yesterday about  the current politics of abortion, and it made me rethink my position on something. A number of social conservatives, myself included, have a habit of saying that the Republican Party has done nothing for the pro-life cause except use pro-lifers as political shock troops in election years. Well, that doesn’t seem to be true. We tend to think this because abortion is still legal. But is that really a fair evaluation? If NPR’s reporting is accurate, there has been a slow but steady incremental rollback of abortion at the margins. Efforts to outlaw abortion have come to naught, but providing abortions has become more difficult because of regulatory imposition. This is because of politics. The abortion rate has been declining for some time, though it hit a plateau last year.

The point I wish to make here is that pro-choicers do have a point: electing pro-life Republicans has made a difference. We pro-lifers ought to consider the possibility that we have made the perfect the enemy of the practical good. And we should consider stepping up our support for crisis pregnancy centers and other organizations that provide real support for women who choose life. If we want them to choose life, we should make it easier for them to make that choice.