Driving Planned Parenthood (Page 2)

Cecile Richards wants to beat back all of those forces. During a June address to the progressive group Take Back America, Richards said: "We have the potential to swing the vote in 2006, 2008 and 2010, and that's a lot of power. The question is, What are we going to do with it? And the answer is, We're going to use it. We're going to marry our current reality as the largest reproductive healthcare provider in this country with our opportunity to be the largest kickass advocacy organization in the country.... We're taking on the opponents of choice in the states and the districts where they live. Planned Parenthood is going to become more political so that healthcare can become less politicized." (Cue thunderous applause.)

This election season Richards is targeting gubernatorial races in Wisconsin and Ohio, where having an ally in that office will mean not having to worry about abortion bans or restrictions being signed into law. To reach young activists, about whom she is glowingly impressed and excited, she is focusing on growing the organization's student groups, called VOX chapters. "In 1999 we had two campus chapters and now we have 180, including on historically black campuses," she says, noting that on her tour "the most incredible thing has been the students I've met in places like Kalamazoo, South-Central [Los Angeles], Sarasota." About the high school students trained by Planned Parenthood as peer educators, she says, "Any question you would ever want to ask, they can answer it without blushing, without apologies or stammering; they have taken on their school boards, their principals and sometimes their own parents. To me, they are the next movement and an unbelievable resource." To reflect the importance of that constituency, Richards is overseeing a revamping of the PPFA website so that people--especially teenagers--can find "confidential, reliable, safe information." She described the platform as being like Fandango, the movie website in which you type your ZIP code and the film you want to see. In this case you would type your ZIP code and the site would help you find the closest place for STI testing, birth control and GYN care.

PPFA's board chair, Esperanza Garcia Walters, told me that with Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood would grow exponentially as a presence on the political stage. "It's what is necessary for us to protect women's rights, to make the lives of women and families better," Garcia Walters, a nurse and consultant in Hollister, California, told me. "It was a gradual shift--a bit like an inch forward at a time. But we're not taking baby steps anymore. We understand this as our work."

Margaret Sanger might say, "What took you so long?" Sanger, who opened the first birth-control clinic in 1916 and saw it closed down ten days later, used any means necessary to give women a chance to control their bodies and their lives. She cultivated relationships with wealthy donors, married money, lobbied politically, published and broke the law in her quest. Despite Planned Parenthood's radical origins, the organization focused on providing services, keeping politics out of the clinic and out of the leadership, until about a decade ago. "Our excellent health provision gave us the credibility to be an advocate," says Gloria Feldt, an author and activist who led the organization from 1996 to 2005 (and is a veteran of the Arizona affiliate). Feldt says that presidents before her had attempted to establish an action fund (a 501(c)(4) organization that can endorse candidates) but until her tenure "had never been able to move the organization to use these strategies to play hardball." In 1998 the Planned Parenthood Action Fund formed its PAC. "When I became national president, the action fund was in the deficit position," she says. "From there we went to $10 million or $12 million in 2000, which we used for ads and on-the-ground, door-knocking work." During the 2004 presidential election it had only $8 million, but PPFA took a critical turn: It endorsed a candidate for the first time in its eighty-nine-year history. "Given the difference between the two candidates, and a Supreme Court that was one vote away from being able to overturn Roe," recalls Feldt, "I thought, If we don't make an endorsement, who are we?" Feldt addressed the 2004 Democratic convention on its first night and toured the country with big names like Gloria Steinem, Moby and Ann Richards campaigning for Senator Kerry and prochoice Democrats in key races.

Come January 2005, George W. Bush was still in office, although Gloria Feldt was not. Is Cecile Richards going to do more political advocacy while Planned Parenthood is under her rule? Gloria Steinem thinks yes: "To me, the very choice meant the board intended to do just that. Planned Parenthood is more trusted and has more credibility than either political party or any political candidate. It also has grassroots. The problem last time was that the big umbrella groups got almost all the money, then turned to local Planned Parenthood Action Funds to do much of the work on the ground. I hope donors realize this time that the Planned Parenthood Action Fund should be, at the very least, the NRA of the centrist-to-progressive 70 percent of the country." Becoming like the National Rifle Association is not a bad goal. Fortune, which has ranked the twenty-five most powerful lobbies, called it the most effective lobby in Washington. In the 2000 elections the NRA spent twice what Planned Parenthood did.

Charlton Heston, former president of the NRA, once commanded his squabbling chapters to "get together" to fight gun control "or get out of the way." Planned Parenthood's affiliates proudly do not speak as one voice, despite the fact that the public sees Planned Parenthood as a single unit. For instance, when former president Gloria Feldt caught heat by sanctioning the selling of an "I had an abortion" T-shirt (which I produced and many Nation readers helped to fund), the heads of several affiliates supported her while others openly pilloried her. "Our diversity is why we needed a leader who understood all aspects of movement building," says Sarah Stoesz of the Minnesota/North Dakota/South Dakota affiliate. "We are a federation of separate and distinct entities trying to knit ourselves into a movement. Before Cecile, we didn't have a chance. Now we do."

Stoesz has a background in healthcare, but she's clear that she's at her job to build a movement, a priority that is reflected in Planned Parenthood's 2005 move into its fiftieth state--North Dakota. The ND chapter isn't a clinic but an office manned by one organizer, 31-year-old Amy Jacobson. She attends any public event with a connection to the issues PPFA supports, speaks on campuses and organizes rallies. This is deliberate. When the affiliate opened the two South Dakota clinics in the 1990s and began to provide abortions in 1994, Stoesz says it was a case of "leading with our clinics rather than leading politically," meaning that Planned Parenthood was setting up shop in hostile territory--South Dakota is the only state to implement a more extreme version of the antiabortion Hyde Amendment, for instance--before assessing if and where there was support. "We have been playing catch-up in South Dakota ever since," she says.

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