The feature that stands out for us in the controversy over Susan G. Komen for the Cure is the role of Mayor Bloomberg. When Komen, the largest breast cancer charity, disclosed that it intended to approve no new grants to Planned Parenthood, Mr. Bloomberg joined in the attack on Komen. He announced he would give $250,000 to Planned Parenthood and asserted that “politics have no place in health care.” The Wall Street Journal published two columns by James Taranto, one before Komen retreated and one after, marking the essentially thuggish nature of Planned Parenthood and its supporters. The Journal also issued a devastating editorial on the mayor’s hypocrisy in exercising his right to do what he wants with his money while failing to defend the same right for Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

What a contrast with the silence of the mayor on what is happening in his own city. The fact is that New York has become the abortion capital of the country. This was marked a year ago at a press conference at which leading clergymen in the city disclosed the then-latest numbers of abortions carried out here. The leaders included both Archbishop Dolan of the Catholic Church and Rabbi David Zwiebel of Agudath Israel of America, which is affiliated with the Council of Torah Sages. They spoke of the tragedy represented by the fact that in New York, according to the then-latest figures, 41% of all pregnancies except those that ended in miscarriage ended in abortion. The numbers added up to 87,273 abortions performed in the city in 2009 alone.

The ratio of abortions in New York turns out to be nearly double the national ratio. Among African-American women the number approaches 60%. The number is so ghastly that even some in the pro-abortion camp feel the need to remark on the figure. The argument they make, however, is that the number shows the need for more birth control. By that logic birth control would be a cure for, say, pneumonia. In any event, when the scandal of these numbers was published by the city’s leading clergy, the mayor stood silent, leading to our editorial “Where Is the Mayor?” The mayor’s silence is echoed by a press that — as Ross Douthat put it in his column in this morning’s Times — is in blinders in respect of the abortion story.

Planned Parenthood, Mr. Douthat notes, is regarded in many newsrooms “as the equivalent of, well, the Komen foundation: an apolitical, high-minded and humanitarian institution whose work no rational person — and certainly no self-respecting woman — could possibly question or oppose.” But Planned Parenthood is different from Susan G. Komen for the Cure, Mr. Douthat points out, in that “millions of Americans — including, yes, millions of American women — do oppose Planned Parenthood. They oppose the 300,000-plus abortions it performs every year (making it the largest abortion provider in the country), and they oppose its tireless opposition to even modest limits on abortion.” He quotes the latest Gallup findings as indicating that a 58% of Americans say abortion should either be “illegal in all circumstances” or “legal in only a few circumstances.”

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This is why the Sun has been urging Senator Santorum to come to New York, fill a venue like Madison Square Garden, and make a national address in respect of this issue. We issued an editorial to that effect after the former senator from Pennsylvania was mocked on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show for the way he and his wife mourned their son Gabriel, who died shortly after birth. There is, we remarked, an opportunity in the current campaign to come into the abortion capital of America and explain the cost to our community and our country of the failure to protect, even encourage these pregnancies and embrace the lives that could have been lived. It is a chance to talk about the importance of population growth and its relation to freedom. What we are reminded from the case of Susan G. Komen for the Cure and its effort to distance itself from a major abortion provider is that this is a vast issue waiting for a leader.