The Susan G. Komen Foundation, once sacrosanct for the work it has done to help women with breast cancer and promote cancer research, is suddenly under assault.

As you no doubt know, Komen is under attack for its recent decision not to continue to making financial grants to Planned Parenthood. The decision has unleashed a storm of anger, some, alas, tinged with a sense of menace. James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal captured the tenor of the reaction:

Planned Parenthood's bitter campaign against Komen–aided by left-liberal activists and media–is analogous to a protection racket: Nice charity you've got there. It'd be a shame if anything happened to it. The message to other Planned Parenthood donors is that if they don't play nice and keep coughing up the cash, they'll get the Komen treatment.

As a nonprofit, Komen depends on generosity. The organization has sought to deflect criticism by explaining that the decision was the result of a new rule that no organization that is being investigated is eligible for a grant. GOP House members are investigating Planned Parenthood.

Carrie has a hard-hitting blog on why the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s decision to stop making grants to Planned Parenthood is their decision.

If you don’t like the decision to withhold funds or if you didn’t approve the original decision to make the grant, there are perfectly legitimate ways to protest. Indeed, I have friend who stopped buying any products with Komen’s iconic pink ribbon on it when Komen made its first grant to Planned Parenthood. Some religious leaders announced that they would no longer work with Komen and urged their flock not to support the organization.

But that was different from the viciousness of the current outcry. What is quite interesting is that critics of the latest move are willing to portray Komen, which has saved an untold number of women’s lives, as being suddenly anti-woman.  

Carrie shares my concern that a letter from 26 aggrieved U.S. senators to Komen officials denouncing the decision could be a form of pressure to attempt to deter the organization from sticking with this decision.  

This is a country in which organizations and individuals should fund or not fund whatever they want to according to their own lights. That is why the letter from the 26 senators should be sounding alarums.