In my previous column, I revealed that the son of the founder of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation is in a joint business venture with Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest (“PPGNW”).

Located in Washington state, PPGNW holds a 12.5 percent share of the Metro Centre mall in Peoria, IL, where Nancy Goodman Brinker’s son Eric Brinker maintains “controlling interest,” according to an e-mail he sent me.

Eric is also a Komen board member.

This only matters because Komen refuses to acknowledge the link between abortion and breast cancer while it insists on bestowing grants to affiliates of the United States’ largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood.

That Eric Brinker is in business with one of those affiliates thickens the plot.

Brinker wrote me that only “20 of Komen’s 122 U.S. affiliates fund breast health services through local Planned Parenthood clinics.”

Coincidentally, two of those 20, Komen Puget Sound and Komen Boise, fund Brinker’s business partner, PPGNW.

Komen has gone to quite a bit of trouble to protect what it claims is an infinitesimal relationship with Planned Parenthood.

Stating Planned Parenthood receives “less than 1 percent” of its donations, Komen now has a webpage, message points and a dispensation letter from a Catholic named Norman dedicated to sanctioning their relationship.

Why? If there were even the remotest chance abortion causes breast cancer, which several worldwide studies conducted over the course of many decades confirm, wouldn’t a responsible breast-cancer foundation back away from any risk of facilitating it?

Eric wrote in his e-mail to me, in bold, “There is no conclusive link between abortion and breast cancer.” “Conclusive,” interesting. Was Eric subtly acknowledging there is an inconclusive link?

Eric also wrote that Komen only funds Planned Parenthood “in areas where Planned Parenthood clinics are the only venue for women to receive breast screenings.” He and other Komen officials I spoke with stressed these are in underprivileged areas.

That this may be true is only because Planned Parenthood locates clinics in poor and minority areas specifically to control their populations through contraception and abortion. Komen merely corroborates this fact.

But that is no excuse to partner with Planned Parenthood. Early detection of breast cancer through screening should not be the goal. Prevention should be the goal.

All five PPGNW Planned Parenthoods involved with Komen either commit or refer for abortions. All dispense birth-control pills and emergency contraceptives.

Which leads to another point. Komen states on its website:

A large analysis that combined the results of many studies found that while women were taking birth-control pills (and shortly thereafter), they had a 10 to 30 percent higher risk of breast cancer than women who had never used birth-control pills.

As for the emergency contraceptive pill, which contains 10-15 times the amount of artificial hormones as a single birth-control pill, its labeling states it is contraindicated if one has a current or past history of breast cancer.

In fact, it appears hormonal contraceptives are more seriously implicated in breast cancer than previously known.

In 2009 a study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention showed that the risk for women under 40 of contracting a newly identified and virulent form of the disease called triple-negative breast cancer rose by 320 percent if using hormonal contraceptives for a year or more.

That same study, co-authored in part by two of the very National Cancer Institute researchers who in 2003 denied a link between abortion and breast cancer, also acknowledged a 40 percent increased risk of contracting breast cancer under the age of 40 if a woman had had an abortion.

So there are several reasons for Komen to part company with Planned Parenthood.

A final point. Tragically, Susan Goodman Komen was only 33 years old when contracting breast cancer, and she died three years later. Her sister Nancy contracted breast cancer at age 39. She is now a 25-year survivor.

Both were under 40.

Would recognition that one’s reproductive history may be implicated in breast cancer be too hard to handle within the upper echelon of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation?

Would it make the disease less noble?