By Randall K. O'Bannon, Ph.D.
When Planned Parenthood's political arm, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund,1 announced its endorsement of Senator John Kerry for president at an April 23, 2004, rally, Planned Parenthood president Gloria Feldt (who doubles as president of the Action Fund) declared, "We must stop the Bush Administration's war on choice. This administration has no respect for the medical privacy or fundamental rights of women. There's never been a more frightening time for the future of reproductive rights. The Planned Parenthood Action Fund will make sure that pro-choice Americans know exactly what's at stake in this election."
The endorsement, heralded as the first in the Action Fund's history, came as no surprise to those who have followed the activities of Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion performer and promoter since Roe's was first handed down. What has gone virtually unnoticed, however, is the length, breadth, and depth of Planned Parenthood's campaign against George W. Bush.
As we shall see, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund is gearing up to have a greater impact in 2004 than it did in the last presidential election. Its efforts continue to be supplemented by an endless stream of invectives hurled against President Bush. Because Mr. Bush opposes abortion, Planned Parenthood insistes his Administration has launched a "war against women."
Heavily Involved in the Last Presidential Election
According to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund Election Report 2000,2 the Action Fund spent $8 million on television ads in the 2000 presidential campaign. These ads ran in 10 crucial battleground states during October and November. In several of those states, the winner's margin of victory was no more than a few thousand votes. In Florida and New Mexico, the margin was in the hundreds. If not for an intense counter-effort on the part of grassroots pro-lifers, the election could have easily swung the other way.
According to the Brennan Center, which tracks campaign spending, there was two-week period in late September and early October 2000 in which Planned Parenthood actually outspent the Democratic National Committee. According to the fund's 2000 Election Report, ads ran on programs where Planned Parenthood thought it might find a receptive audience, such as Good Morning America, the Tonight Show, Oprah, Rosie O'Donnell, 60 Minutes, and the presidential debates.
The Election Report says the Action Fund's ads targeted single women, particularly Republican-leaning "pro-choice" women who might be attracted by then-Texas governor George W. Bush's theme of "compassionate conservatism." The various ads, whose scripts were featured in the report, said Bush agreed he was "the most anti-abortion governor in America," and insisted that Bush "does not trust women to make their own choices."
The ads pushed the usual buttons. But one of the most dramatic ads featured four women who identified themselves as Republicans who lamented the candidacy of George Bush.
One said that "Bush says he wants to take away a woman's right to choose," while another added, "I don't want government in my private life, telling me what to do. And that's why I have a problem with George W. Bush."
Other activities sponsored by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund in the 2000 presidential election touted by the report include 500,000 "Get Out the Vote" calls featuring Barbra Streisand, radio advertising in Washington and Oregon, and a half million e-mails to voters featuring actresses Whoopi Goldberg and Sarah Jessica Parker.
There were also banner ads on the voter.com website, 2.5 million nationwide voter education mailers, as well as full-page ads in USA Today and prominent newspapers in Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Earlier Planned Parenthood reports, such as the 1997 Plan of Action and the election primer Capturing the Vote of Pro-Choice America it issued prior to the 1992 elections (when pro-abortion candidate Bill Clinton ran against Bush's father), featured campaigns such as "Keep the Choice Yours" and "Maggie's Millions," which sought to register and mobilize voters, including women who visit their clinics, who were likely to favor abortion. The 2000 Election Report mentions local Planned Parenthood Action Funds which also registered voters or promoted registration at clinics.3
Planned Parenthood was not successful in its efforts to get its favored (even if never officially endorsed) candidate elected to the presidency in 2000. However, it does credit itself with being instrumental in successful campaigns to oust several incumbent pro-life senators and congressmen, including Senator Spencer Abraham (R-Mi.) and Senator Slade Gorton (R-Or.).
Plans for the 2004 Presidential Race
NRL News has not seen any figures on what the Planned Parenthood Action Fund's projects its spending for the upcoming election to be. However, in its May endorsement of Kerry, an Action Fund press release declared, "The Planned Parenthood Action Fund has embarked upon an ambitious effort to mobilize pro-choice Americans throughout the country. Specifically, the Action Fund has set forth a multi-tiered plan to increase turnout among a key bloc of the electorate - - single women."
The release indicates that the Planned Parenthood Action Fund plans to employ many of the same strategies in the upcoming election it used in 2000. According to the release, the Action Fund "has set forth an aggressive early contact plan that will begin in June in key battleground states and carry through to November. To increase turnout among these key voting blocs, the Action Fund will communicate with these voters through a variety of means including direct mail, phones, broadcast advertising and person-to-person contact."
"It's time for the Planned Parenthood Action Fund to bring its extraordinary strength with critically important voting blocs to bear at a point in history when reproductive rights are most threatened," Planned Parenthood president Feldt said in the release. "There is no organization as uniquely suited to engage these groups and motivate them to vote as the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. Together, we will make a difference on Election Day."
Heated Up Rhetoric
Throughout Mr. Bush's presidency, but especially in the last couple of years, Planned Parenthood has offered a steady drumbeat of complaints about the "anti-choice" Bush Administration and its pro-life policies.
Early on, Planned Parenthood promoted its challenge against Bush's nomination of John Ashcroft for attorney general on its ROEvBUSH.com web site. Today, that web site has been renamed SaveROE.com, and serves as a vehicle for promoting abortion and opposing more recent pro-life Bush judicial nominees.
Prominently featured on both the SaveROE.com and plannedparenthood. com websites are Planned Parenthood reports on the "War on Women" supposedly being waged by the Bush Administration and its allies in Congress. A "Chronology of Attacks on Reproductive Rights" tracks congressional and administration actions on abortion, "family planning," and related issues (as of this writing, up through May 2004). "A Pernicious Web" appears to offer a similar chronology, though organized more topically.
Among the highlights featured in the chronologies are the President's signing of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban ("a dangerous abortion ban that will harm women and that ignores a woman's constitutional right to make decisions about her own body"), the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, and his reinstatement of the "Mexico City Policy." Planned Parenthood terms the policy, which ensures that U.S. family planning funds do not go to groups that perform or promote abortion as a means of family planning in other countries, as the "Global Gag Rule."
Hardly modest in assigning credit, Planned Parenthood declared in its 2002-2003 Annual Report, "Our publication of 'George W. Bush's War on Women' and the subsequent editorial published on that theme in the the New York Times ["The War Against Women," 1/12/03] shifted the landscape for understanding reproductive rights today."
George W. Bush as the Enemy Commander
Feldt elaborates on the martial theme and tries to marshal troops against the president and his policies in her latest book, The War on Choice (Bantam, 2004).
Early on, Feldt declares, "It's impossible to analyze the war on choice without looking at the record of its current commander in chief." With the help of a Congress "now engaged in a full-scale attack on reproductive freedom with a vast array of anti-choice legislation," Bush "has supported some fifty initiatives to curtail the reproductive rights of women and men, both in the U.S. and around the globe."
Those initiatives include legislation such as the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban mentioned earlier, and revising the Children's Health Insurance Program to give states the option of offering prenatal care beginning at conception to low-income women who are not poor enough to qualify for Medicare.
Confident with Kerry
Acting as head of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Gloria Feldt was hardly reticent in calling for the defeat of George W. Bush when announcing the group's presidential endorsement. In her April 23, 2004, speech (found on www.ppaction.org/pp votes/kerry_rally_speech.html), Feldt said, The Bush Administration is waging a war on choice.
... We must win this war on choice! And we can.
This is the most important election in my lifetime and possibly in yours.
This isn't an election we hope to win.
This is an election we must win.
This is an election with your help, with this candidate, at this time
WE WILL WIN!
For your daughters, your sisters, your friends: vote for medical privacy and access to family planning, vote for our next president, John Kerry!
Clearly Planned Parenthood fully understood John Kerry's total commitment to the pro-abortion agenda.
NOTES:
1. According to the web site, "The Planned Parenthood Action Fund is an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit organization formed as the political arm of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The Action Fund engages in educational and electoral activity, including public education campaigns, grassroots organizing, and legislative advocacy." Gloria Feldt is listed as both the president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund and as the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
2. A copy of the report can be found at www.ppaction.org/ppvotes/2000_Election_report_TOC.html
3. Planned Parenthood Action Fund of Central and Northern Arizona, Planned Parenthood Action Fund of Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Luis Obispo Counties (California), Planned Parenthood Advocates Mar Monte (portions of California and Nevada), Nebraska Planned Parenthood Voters for Choice (voter registration display and forum), Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania Advocates, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Chester County (Pennsylvania), Planned Parenthood of Houston and Southeast Texas Action Fund, Action Fund of San Antonio and South Central Texas, Utahns for Choice, and Action Fund for Planned Parenthood Association of Utah.