[UPDATE at 5 p.m.: After her morning TV appearance, Congresswoman Sanchez appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews in the afternoon and reiterated her stance that “it's really sad” that Komen for the Cure has decided for political reasons to attack “a very important” medical resource for countless women, Planned Parenthood.
[ORIGINAL POST at 12:30 p.m.:] After praising the “good” work of the Susan B. Komen for the Cure organization, Rep. Loretta Sanchez told a national television audience this morning that she believes conservative, anti-abortion forces in the group have unnecessarily caused a rift with Planned Parenthood.
“It's a shame to see this [relationship] break apart,” Sanchez, an Anaheim Democrat, told MSNBC. “[But] it's driven by politics.”
]
In the past, the Komen group has helped fund Planned Parenthood's
efforts to improve women's health, including getting screened for breast
cancer.
Sanchez seemed to blame the rift on Karen Handel, a new Komen
vice president, an anti-abortion Republican and a former unsuccessful
Georgia governor candidate who had the backing of Sarah Palin.
“Politics
has no place here,” said Sanchez, who defended Planned Parenthood's
mission and noted that she “hopes these two organizations can find ways
to work together.”
Republicans in the House of Representatives
have made no secret they want to end federal subsidies to Planned
Parenthood in the hopes of destroying the group because a relatively small portion of its services are related to abortion.
A liberal blogger hailed Komen's move against Planned Parenthood, which receives no federal funding designated for abortion, and women's healthcare a “psychodrama.”
Since her upset 1996 victory over anti-abortion, GOP Rep. Robert K. Dornan, Sanchez has been Orange County's lone Democrat in Congress.
–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.