Last week Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the nation’s best-known financier of breast-cancer research and screenings, announced that it would no longer fund a well-known national organization that, whatever its other merits, does not conduct mammograms, the X-ray procedure by which women are screened for breast cancer. For that, the Komen foundation has been denounced and vilified. A campaign began to defund it — in the name of promoting women’s health.

This is, in a word, bizarre. How could the organization that has done more than any other on earth to raise awareness of and funding for the fight against breast cancer possibly have committed a moral wrong by recommitting money from a group that does no mammograms to others that do? Welcome to the mind of the pro-abortion activist.

The group from which Komen withdrew its financial support is, of course, Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider. Planned Parenthood justifies its government and foundation funding by noting that most of its budget goes to women’s health and family planning. But that’s a little misleading. Fully 71.5 percent of Planned Parenthood’s budget goes to STD screening and contraception. A mere 10 percent is for “women’s health.” About 13 percent is for cancer screening, primarily PAP tests. Three percent is for abortions. Planned Parenthood claims to do nearly 750,000 breast cancer screenings a year. But Nancy Brinker, founder and CEO of the Komen foundation, last week called those merely “pass-through” services. Planned Parenthood does not conduct any in-house mammograms, but rather refers women to other clinics for mammograms, biopsies and other cancer treatment, Brinker noted. She said in a conference call, “We look at the quality of the grants. We don’t like to do pass-through grants anymore. We were giving them money; they were sending women out for mammograms. What we would like to have are clinics where we can directly fund mammograms.”

If you thought Planned Parenthood performed mammograms, you might have been misled by the organization itself. The Weekly Standard pointed out last week that Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards went on CNN last year to oppose Republican efforts to end Planned Parenthood’s federal subsidies. If the subsidies are cut, she said, “millions of women are going to lose access, not to abortion services, to basic family planning, you know, mammograms.” Except, Planned Parenthood doesn’t do mammograms.

Why would a group supposedly devoted to women’s health choose to hire doctors to perform abortions, but not mammograms? And why would the CEO lie about that?

On Friday, Brinker clarified Komen’s funding priorities. It would continue Planned Parenthood’s existing grants. But in the future, it would fund only groups that perform mammograms. That would disqualify Planned Parenthood unless it started offering mammograms. We’ll see what it decides.

Donations to Planned Parenthood rose dramatically after the announcement. So if the grant money was being replaced by private donations, what’s the big deal after all? Under that scenario, doesn’t everyone win?

The big deal is this: Planned Parenthood’s receipt of funding from establishment organizations such as Komen for the Cure and the U.S. government gives a patina of respectability to its abortion business. If the group is funded only by hard-core pro-abortion leftists, mainstream Americans will become less supportive of both Planned Parenthood and abortion. They want your money because with your money comes your acceptance. For the pro-abortion left, that’s what this fight is really about.