Re: “Remember who gave women the vote” (letter, 1-15).

Republicans today apparently neither respect nor like women. Republicans want to end subsidies to Planned Parenthood, which provides health care to low-income women. Republican governors pass laws forcing women to undergo uncalled-for medical exams if they’re seeking an abortion.

Republicans failed to renew the expired Violence Against Women Act (enacted in 1994) and stall on renewing the International Violence Against Women Act. Republicans huff and puff about Social Security and Medicare, the recipients of which are mostly women.

Granting women the vote 93 years ago does not forgive today’s Republicans and …

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Columnist Kathleen Parker (TNT, 2-5) asserts that reaction to the Susan G. Komen foundation action and the rule including contraceptive care in health care “tread on fundamental freedoms” of “conscience and religious liberty.”

While Parker’s columns can be interesting, she has missed the mark on this one. She confuses the rights of individuals with organizational obligations.

While Komen is legally free to decide how to distribute the money it receives, that money is obtained from individuals choosing to fight breast cancer and improve women’s health. The reaction to Komen’s decision by thousands of those same individuals who choose not …

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“Coercion and intimidation are the tools of mobs and tyrants and have no place in this calculus,” writes columnist Kathleen Parker (TNT, 2-5) about those who communicated dismay to the Susan G. Komen foundation in recent days.

She was implying that those who were upset by the foundation’s choice to defund grants to assist low-income, mostly young women detect breast cancer through free visits to Planned Parenthood health clinics are part of a mob manipulated by tyrants who resorted to coercion and intimidation. Not true.

My email last week to the local Komen affiliate said: “The Komen decision to …

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I am writing not only as the executive director of Komen Puget Sound but also as a breast cancer survivor. I have spent the last 30 years of my life fighting for low-income and underserved women and families in communities across the country.

From my experience, when political and personal agendas come into play, in most cases it’s women – and underserved women in particular – who suffer.

While not everyone has had to personally battle breast cancer, nearly everyone knows someone who has had breast cancer touch their lives. Komen Puget Sound is the single largest provider of breast …

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Re: “Charity halts grants to Planned Parenthood” (TNT, 2-1).

I take issue with Sen. Patty Murray, who is quoted as saying the investigation into the use of $487 million in tax dollars from government grants and reimbursements to Planned Parenthood is “shameful.”

Let’s consider the facts: 11  states have eliminated or decreased funding to Planned Parenthood and redirected resources to other health-care providers, four states are investigating Planned Parenthood for overpricing and/or improperly billing drugs that are being reimbursed from tax dollars, Planned Parenthood has admitted firing or retraining staff who didn’t report underage sexual abuse, and Planned Parenthood has …

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Thomas Jefferson once said, “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

Here in Washington, our state legislators take a very different approach. With the passage of Senate Bill 5912, the Legislature decided to increase funding for Take Charge, a contraceptive program which Planned Parenthood claims pays for the services of 70 percent of its clients.

Many Washington voters do not favor procedures performed by Planned Parenthood.

The Take Charge program was created to reduce the state’s costs for live births. But the state’s costs …

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L. Lisa Lawrence did a fine job (Your Voice, 4-19) detailing why Planned Parenthood should remain a fixture in American (and international) communities. Certainly, many women are greatly aided by the services it offers.

But why should the government be supporting this organization when it shows profit in the hundreds of millions ($994 million for 2009, as noted on Planned Parenthood’s website for its annual report for 2008-2009).

If it is such a great organization, surely it can use its profits to help the communities of which it is a part rather than relying on the government (and its ever-increasing …

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Re: “Bill seeks to clarify pregnancy centers” (TNT, 2-23).

The Associated Press has it all wrong. The pregnancy centers don’t need to be clarified. What needs clarification is what happens behind the doors of Planned Parenthood. Even the name Planned Parenthood helps disguise what they do.

At a minimum their clients should be warned that they are in business to destroy their unborn child and to otherwise prevent the conception of our future generation. What a noble role in support of our society.

Unfortunately, emotionally distraught and unsupported young people submit to their distortion of the truth and …

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