Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney says that it's "wrong" for organizations like Susan G. Komen for the Cure to fund Planned Parenthood's breast cancer screenings for poor women.
During an interview with conservative radio host Scott Hennen on Monday, Romney said he disagreed with the Komen Foundation reversing their earlier decision to cut off breast cancer screening funding for Planned Parenthood because they also provide abortions, even though he had promised to protect a woman's right to choose in 2002.
"Look, the idea that we're subsidizing an institution which is providing abortion, in my view, is wrong," the candidate said.
"I am a pro-life individual. I was a pro-life governor, served as a pro-life governor. I'm a pro-life candidate. I simply do not want to participate in anything that takes away the life of an unborn child," he added.
In a 2011 report (PDF), the American Cancer Society found that breast cancer survivors from low-income areas had a lower survival rate, possibly because they were less likely to receive screenings. Less than 50 percent of poor women between the ages of 40 and 49 had screenings in the two years prior to 2010, while over 67 percent of non-poor women were screened.
Last week, the former Massachusetts governor claimed he had misspoken when he said that he was “not concerned about the very poor.”
“We have a safety net there,” he had told CNN’s Soledad O’Brien. “If it needs repair, I’ll fix it.”
