MOVING THE MIDDLE  

Note: Wise Public Affairs was not involved in this campaign. This case study was compiled using publicly available information.

   

CASE STUDY: RECENT EFFORTS TO DEFUND PLANNED PARENTHOOD Activists: The Center for Medical Progress, Operation Rescue, Silent Scream, STOPP Planned Parenthood, American Life League, The Center for Bioethical Reform, Life Decisions International Advocates: Students for Life, Susan B. Anthony List, Americans United for Life, National Right to Life, Pro-Life Action League, Feminists for Life, Live Action, US Conference of Catholic Bishops and various “socially conservative” organizations Academics: Bioethics Defense Fund, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Medical Association, Association of Pro-Life Physicians, American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Catholic Medical Association, Physicians for Life, Pro-Life Healthcare Alliance, Endowment for Human Development Antagonists: Planned Parenthood Federation of America, National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, National Organization for Women, National Abortion Federation, National Coalition of Abortion Providers, Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, Pro-Choice Action Network, Pro-Choice Action Network, The New Civil Rights Movement, Stop Patriarchy Mission

End federal funding for Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Strategy

In 2015, the Center for Medical Progress began to release videos of numerous undercover operations where actors posing as fetal tissue buyers engaged in substantive discussions with PPFA representatives about providing compensating for the bodies and organs of aborted babies. New and increasingly disturbing videos, some showing aborted body parts and graphic descriptions of abortion procedures being altered to harvest more organs, continued to be released on a weekly basis, keeping the issue in the public eye. Pro-life advocacy organizations leveraged social media to disseminate the videos to a broad audience when mainstream media outlets refused to cover the story. An aggressive grassroots effort culminated with public protests at Planned Parenthood facilities across the country, in state capitals, and in Washington, D.C., and there is heavy pressure on GOP presidential candidates to vocally oppose abortion and commit to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

Tactics and Positioning

The pro-life movement is a social and political movement that began in 1973 in the United States, opposing abortion on moral, sectarian, and scientific grounds. Pro-life advocates generally agree that human life begins at conception; therefore, the inalienable right to life for all people cited in the U.S. Declaration of Independence applies to those people still in the womb. The pro-life movement includes numerous organizations, with no single centralized decision-making body, though it is often affiliated with Christian religious groups and is frequently, though not exclusively, allied with the Republican Party. Within the movement, there are varying degrees of opposition to abortion, with some advocating for complete legal prohibition and others pushing for restricting elective abortion (supporting exceptions for issues such as life of the mother and pregnancies resulting from rape and/or incest). Due in part to the

MOVING THE MIDDLE  

Note: Wise Public Affairs was not involved in this campaign. This case study was compiled using publicly available information.

   

wide range of goals and strategies, the movement has had difficulty coalescing around a central message and/or focus. Recently, pro-life groups have focused on calling attention to the legal and ethical failings of the largest abortion provider in the U.S., Planned Parenthood Federation of America, with the goal of restricting access to abortion and doing away with the nearly $500 million per year in federal funding PPFA receives. They have used a variety of tactics to accomplish this goal, including legislative advocacy and highlighting advances in research on fetal development.

Activists, utilizing a wide range of tactics to bring attention to the issue through media reports, the releasing of undercover videos, and public rallies, have helped the broader pro-life movement gain traction on calls to strip PPFA of their federal funding. In response to the release of undercover videos by CMP, aggressive grassroots efforts have included public protests at Planned Parenthood facilities across the country, at state capitals, and in

Washington, D.C. On August 22, 2015, pro-life activists gathered at Planned Parenthood facilities across America in a “pro-life national day of protests”. Media reports suggest that the CMP videos had been in the works for 30 months, and are being released weeks apart in order to keep the dialogue relevant and active, to ensure that Planned Parenthood/abortion is a topic in the 2016 presidential race. The CMP’s release of undercover videos provided established pro-life Advocates and Academics with new leverage, and a unique opportunity to use the disgust felt by the public at the prospect of Planned Parenthood dismembering and selling baby’s body parts to lobby for an end to federal funding for PPFA. Advocates have primarily focused on disseminating the video evidence against PPFA, and leveraged the attention to secure meetings with legislators and political figures, leading to legislation introduced in 2015 to defund Planned Parenthood. Work by Advocates to defund PPFA has led to Congress sending several letters to PPFA and other tissue procurement organizations requesting answers to many of the questions raised by the videos. Republican Leadership in the House and Senate have agreed to use all investigative tools available to come to a conclusion about the legality of PPFA’s activities. Meanwhile, Academics on both sides took to the airwaves and wrote opinion pieces discussing the bioethics of abortion and using aborted fetal body parts for medical research.

Antagonists were caught off guard when the CMP videos were released, and stumbled to defend themselves. At the time of the first video’s release, there was no counter-strategy at the grassroots level, though some extreme pro-choice activist groups (including organizations such as the Stop Patriarchy movement and the Satanic Temple) did show up to the pro-life events to stage counter-demonstrations. Because of the strategy employed by the CMP to release the videos one at a time, PPFA has had to continue defending their actions while each new video brings more negative attention to the their activities. Only after the release of the fourth video did Antagonists coalesce around a public campaign to support Planned Parenthood and defend the “access to women’s health” that they provide. Many Antagonists began rallying around PPFA and painting them as the victim of unfair and misleading attacks, which their allies in the media and political figures helped echo. PPFA even went so far as to hire a Democratic opposition research firm to produce an “independent report” on the validity of the videos, which it then disseminated to the press, claiming it showed the videos were edited and misleading.

Outcome

This campaign is still in progress.