Until recently, Abby Johnson, the director of Planned Parenthood's clinic in Bryan, Texas, escorted patients past angry protesters and publicly excoriated the local antiabortion organization for spreading lies and threatening women's health. But the 29-year-old resigned from her position last month and has since joined forces with that long-standing foe, Coalition for Life, and even taken to praying with picketers outside the office where she worked for eight years. Johnson, who won the clinic's "Employee of the Year" award in 2008, has a two-part explanation for her stunning about-face: First, she says higher-ups pushed her to raise the number of abortions performed at the clinic due to financial woes; and second, she recently saw an ultrasound of an abortion, which she says led to a sudden "change of heart."
As you can imagine, this transformation has been a tad controversial.
The activists who held countless vigils for Johnson and her colleagues in the small conservative town, home to Texas A&M, see it as a literal godsend; conservative Hot Air blogger Ed Morrissey announced that he wasn't surprised "to see Planned Parenthood pressure its offices to push abortions harder ... [because] with less money flowing into the abortion mills, they need to market it more aggressively." Even in some typically liberal venues, a temporary restraining order filed on Friday by Planned Parenthood against Johnson and Coalition for Life has only raised suspicions against the clinic: On Double X, antiabortion writer Rachael Larimore asks, "Is Planned Parenthood going to such lengths to keep Johnson from discussing its 'business model'?" She adds, "I don't want to jump to conclusions" -- too bad she clearly already has.
A copy of Planned Parenthood's petition for the restraining order obtained by Salon suggests it might not be as simple as these commentators claim. The document says that Johnson was put on a performance improvement plan on Oct. 2 of this year. That same day, she was allegedly seen "removing items from the Health Center." Days later, Johnson was allegedly seen copying "confidential files." Some time later, a physician from another city who occasionally works for Planned Parenthood's Bryan clinic reported that a protester from 40 Days for Life, a campaign that aims for a constant, around-the-clock presence in front of targeted clinics and is also linked to Coalition for Life, said that they "knew that the physician worked for [Planned Parenthood] in Bryan."
The petition additionally claims that Johnson told a nurse practitioner who works for Planned Parenthood that she had passed along the provider's résumé, home address and phone number to Coalition for Life. Johnson also reportedly told a clinic employee that "something big" was going to take place this past weekend during the finale of the organization's latest 40-day protest, although the big something apparently never materialized. Reached by phone, Johnson told Salon that she has "no idea what they're talking about." She says she "never took anything from Planned Parenthood" and "would never disclose patient's confidential information." Planned Parenthood is unable to comment on the matter at this time.
Serious concerns remain that information might have been passed along that puts clients and employees at risk. The petition puts it this way: "Every service provider that works for [Planned Parenthood's] Bryan Health Center has already been a target of the Coalition for Life in the past. If Johnson discloses information about the employees, clients, and service providers to the public, these people will be subject to protests, harassment, and perhaps physical violence from groups and individuals that oppose [the clinic's] activities." In the wake of Dr. George Tiller's murder, it's indisputable how very real that threat is.
Johnson knows all too well just how dangerous antiabortion activists can be. Bryan's Planned Parenthood has been particularly besieged. In a radio interview (which you can listen to here) on Sept. 20, Johnson told of death threats "targeted at me and my husband and my daughter" and being followed in her car. What's more, on the day of Tiller's murder, her husband begged and pleaded for her not to leave the house, she said. She also spoke of the "harassing things" the entire staff would receive in the mail, the neighborhood-wide mailers activists sent out announcing employees as "abortionists" and the picket lines in front of workers' homes. "It's very scary," she said, "this group of people that claim to be these peaceful prayer warriors, or whatever they call themselves, it's kind of ironic that some of them would be sending death threats." Again, on another radio show, "Fair and Feminist," on Sept. 27 -- a mere eight days before her resignation -- she raised the issue of death threats: "They involve my daughter and my husband, so it's ironic that these people who call themselves pro-life are sending death threats."
Speaking of ironic, Johnson told Salon that she witnessed the ultrasound-guided abortion that sent her to the other side of the picket line on Sept. 26, the day before she gave that interview. She says she had considered backing out of the interview at the last minute but didn't because she was friends with one of the show's hosts. Johnson was also still trying to rationalize the many years she had spent passionately defending the clinic. "It's hard to admit that you're wrong," she said. That is especially true when you've spent years defending your work to family and friends, as Johnson did. Neither her parents, members of a Baptist church in Rockdale, Texas, nor her husband ever "bought into the pro-choice mission," she says.
In a press release touting Johnson's change of belief, David Bereit, national director of 40 Days for Life, which originated in 2004 outside of the Bryan clinic, said: "This amazing conversion demonstrates the importance of a constant, peaceful prayer presence in front of abortion facilities." Just how peaceful is a protest that lasts 24 hours a day for 40 days, though? Johnson herself called it "40 Days of Harassment" during one of her recent radio appearances. The organization has held five 40-day "vigils" since that first prayer blitz. That's a total of 240 days, or 5,760 hours, of protest. Protesters have also reportedly used the license plate numbers of cars seen visiting the clinic to find the home addresses of patients and employees, and then send them condemnatory postcards. (You can imagine how traumatizing this is for young women whose cars are registered at their parents' address.)
That level of harassment is enough to make anyone consider a new profession. Not to mention, a threat to the life of one's husband and daughter would send most folks fleeing to the first bland desk job they can find. That is why antiabortion activists do it; terrorism can be very effective. That isn't to say that Johnson was coerced into quitting her job and joining the other side. It's utterly believable that an ultrasound could change one's feelings about abortion, especially for someone living in a staunchly conservative community. However, it's hard to fathom spending eight years witnessing abortions, crossing picket lines and having your life threatened -- first as a volunteer and later as a rank-climbing employee -- without being clear on your feelings about abortion or the basic medical reality of the procedure. How many pamphlets and protest signs displaying extremely graphic images (far more so than an ultrasound) must have been shoved in her face over the years?
Then there is the issue of her claim of pressure to increase the number of abortions performed at the clinic as a way of raking in more dough. That allegation contradicts Planned Parenthood's guiding mission, which is pregnancy prevention -- but more important, it contradicts the fact of the organization's business: Only 3 percent of all health services provided by Planned Parenthood are abortion. Of course, Johnson knows this as well as anybody. In fact, she cited this very statistic in one of her radio interviews in September. In response, the host asked: "So, it's really not that much." She responded: "No ... we think 3 percent is a very small amount."
Not small enough, apparently, to keep her from scheduling an appearance to speak out against abortions at Planned Parenthood on Friday's "O'Reilly Factor." Something tells me we're witnessing the birth of the next right-wing media darling.
Sarah Palin is the new anti-abortion icon, Ben Smith argues today in Politico: "Her decision to carry to term her Down syndrome child established a special relationship with anti-abortion activists, and now Palin has transformed herself from a politician who was anti-abortion into the leading figure of the anti-abortion movement." The truth, though, is that she has been upstaged by the movement's real star: Trig.
The 19-month-old has accompanied Palin on her book tour and is rarely out of the spotlight. He can be seen resting on her hip as she addresses a crowd or carried by an aide while Palin signs books. Adoring fans have showed up with handmade signs that trumpet things like, "We Love Trig." Jason Recher, a campaign aide who came along for the book tour, told Politico: "There’s a lot of people who come through the line to see Trig instead of to see her." It makes me think of the way believers the world over flock to see children who are deemed to be the reincarnation of a particular deity. Trig is being treated as the movement's blessed icon, a martyr because of what could have happened to him: abortion.
He's also being used as a straw man baby against pro-choice activists. "Palin's allies [suggest] that antipathy to her is based on the belief that she should have had an abortion rather than bearing her son," Smith explains. He quotes two conservatives bloggers who argue that this is part of a "broader societal bias against disability." This is just another iteration of the "pro-choicers hate babies" argument. Thankfully, Smith injects some reportorial balance: "Those people are, in fact, rather hard to find."
That doesn't stop Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-choice Susan B. Anthony List, from offering a sneering representation of the liberal point-of-view: "She had the audacity in the eyes of the abortion rights world to actually have this child and then has the audacity to bring him along with her and feature him as a centrally valued person in their family." Who, exactly, in the mainstream reproductive rights camp is offended by her choice? Dannenfelser dishonestly recasts disagreements with the way Trig is being used to further the anti-choice agenda with an objection to his actual existence and the fact that his family adores him. It isn't Palin's choice that we care about -- it's her disregard for other women's right to make their own choice, whatever that may be.
Remarkably, the article ends with a relatively inoffensive sentiment from Dannenfelser: She celebrates Palin for providing an example that will influence some women confronted with a similar situation. I think it's wonderful for there to be a public example of a family happily raising a baby with Down syndrome; women should be exposed to a whole range of role models for the various paths that are possible in life. But, again, it comes down to the issue of, hello, choice. Even Palin writes in her book that she considered abortion "for a split second" when she found out about Trig's condition. She considered it because she had a choice.
Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., has been a very tough nut to crack when it comes to healthcare reform, even though it's his own party's leaders trying to do the cracking. Nelson, who represents a key swing vote that Democrats must have in order to defeat a Republican filibuster, has been continuously reticent about supporting the legislation, especially because it currently contains a public option proposal.
Now, he's got a new reason to oppose the Senate's bill, and he's firm in his opposition -- in fact, Nelson says, if he doesn't get the language he wants added, he'll vote to support a filibuster.
Earlier this week, Nelson said he was working on an amendment that contains restrictions on coverage for abortion almost identical to those in the controversial Stupak amendment, which is part of the House's legislation. On Thursday, the senator told reporters that if those restrictions aren't in the bill, he won't vote for cloture.
"I've said at the end of the day if it doesn't have Stupak language on abortion in it I won't vote to move it off the floor," Nelson said.
There's a catch-22 here: Nelson probably doesn't have the votes to get his amendment attached to the Senate bill. Plus, enough House progressives have vowed to vote against the final legislation if it still contains the Stupak amendment that the bill couldn't pass. But without Nelson's vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will have to convince a Republican or two to defect in order to break a filibuster.
Two weeks ago gay activist John Aravosis asked the readers of his popular AmericaBlog to stop giving to the Democratic Party:
"Until the Democratic Congress passes, and President Obama signs, legislation enacting [the Employment Non-Discrimination Act], repealing [don't ask, don't tell], and [recognizing gay marriages], we ask you to join us in pledging to postpone contributions to the Democratic National Committee, Organizing for America, and the Obama campaign."
Within hours a host of gay or liberal activists endorsed the move -- Daily Kos, Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake, Dan Savage, Michelangelo Signorile, David Mixner, Andy Towle and Michael Goff of Towleroad, Paul Sousa of Boston's Equal Rep, Pam Spaulding, Robin Tyler of the Equality Campaign, Bil Browning of the Bilerico Project. Even the more conservative forces among gay politicos, like the establishment Human Rights Campaign, responded not by distancing itself from the activists' effort but by saying that donors should always think carefully when spending scarce resources.
Right around the time the gays took their hands out of their wallets, 64 Democratic representatives amended the House healthcare bill to ban women from obtaining abortion coverage in the new health insurance market, a provision known as the Stupak amendment. Women are supposedly "furious" about what the House Democrats did. But no one with money is on record as striking back. Can you imagine the response from gay political activists if the House voted to strip all money for AIDS treatment from the healthcare bill? Maybe rich women Democratic donors are reconsidering their giving strategies. But they're being awfully quiet about it.
We do not hear that Nancy Pelosi's best pals, Gap clothing heiress Elizabeth Fisher and Getty oil billionaire Ann Getty Earhart, paused their largess. In 2008 Getty gave more than $100,000 to various Democratic campaigns, $20,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Similarly, Fisher gave generously to various Democrats and $26,000 to the DCCC. In the alphabetical listing of the donors who maxed out at the DCCC's legal limit of $28,500 in the 2008 cycle, almost exactly half had female names. Sixty-four of the Congress members they funded voted for the Stupak Amendment. Yet we do not hear that Denise Abrams, Anne Abramson, Elizabeth Alter or Amy Stan -- just to take the first names on the list -- have threatened to withhold further $28,500 maximum contributions until the representatives stop the barefoot-and-pregnant campaign. The well-heeled Women Donor's Fund started a reproductive rights action circle and spent around $2 million to "create a values-based, affirmative way for progressive candidates to talk about their views that galvanizes support." The WDN's Web site says it "briefed thousands at both the national and state levels, including ... the leadership staff of the ... Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee." As the Web site Open Left points out, the DCCC spent $1 out of every $12 it collected from its substantially female donor base electing the 23 Democrats who both voted for the abortion restriction and against healthcare; they must have missed that reproductive rights action circle briefing.
Why won't women take a lesson from the bold voices of the gay movement? It cannot be that women think their contributions aren't large enough to pose a credible threat. Not only did women number heavily among the max givers to the DCCC, but they also accounted for 42 percent of the donations to the presidential campaign, a whopping $145 million. By contrast (although statistics for the heterosexuality of donors are not kept and strategic gay donors are clearly giving in ways that do not show up on surveys) we do know that during the primary, Barack Obama raised about $1.7 million, or about 3 percent of his contributions to date, from the gayest ZIP codes in the country. But that didn't stop the gay activists from raising the ante on him when they thought he was screwing them over.
Maybe women think the Stupak amendment is just one of those awful things that ultimately won't come to pass. Just be good girls and don't make a fuss and we'll water it down in the final bill. Word is that some such story kept organized pro-choice lobbyists mum during the months while the Catholic bishops and anti-choice activists successfully organized. Women's activism: the audacity of swallowing.
Women have been swallowing since 1973. In 1976, an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress passed the Hyde Amendment, pulling abortion out of coverage by Medicaid, and women did nothing to make the Democrats pay. Knowing that women were weak, the Democrats did not filibuster the Republicans' transparently anti-choice Supreme Court nominees, culminating last year in the court's decision in the late-term abortion case, describing women as incapable of making their own abortion choices. Seeing that women were weaker still, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and its Senate counterpart asked pro-choice women to gag down the host of anti-choice candidates the Dems had found in order to create a Democratic majority in Congress. Now the Democratic majority the women enabled is about to make the Hyde Amendment worse, and women are negotiating only about how much worse it's going to get. Anyone who knows anything about bargaining recognizes the dynamic: give in the first time, and you're weakened in the next round. And so it goes until you finally stop going along.
All histories of the gay movement record how much the founders took from the racial civil rights movement and the feminist movement that came before. It's time for women to return the favor. Gay leaders can threaten the Democratic Party with a few paltry million-dollar donations. To paraphrase the lady at the diner in "When Harry Met Sally," I'll have what they're having.
Progressives have been angry over the inclusion of the Stupak-Pitts amendment, which imposes strict restrictions on abortion coverage, in the House's healthcare reform bill. But they were at least cheered to see that the Senate's language was much more moderate. Now, though, there's more bad news for supporters of abortion rights: One senator, a pivotal player in the whole debate, wants to add something like the Stupak amendment to the Senate's legislation.
That would be Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., who told reporters on Tuesday, "I'm working on an abortion amendment. It's as identical to Stupak as it can be."
Under the Stupak amendment, women who receive federal subsidies couldn't buy a plan that covers abortion -- though they could purchase additional coverage with their own money. (Opponents of the language point out that this means people planning for unplanned pregnancies.) The Senate bill, as currently written, allows women to buy plans that cover abortion even if they're getting federal aid, but the insurers would have to segregate public and private money and use only the latter to actually pay for the procedure. Additionally, any public option would be able to offer abortion coverage, as long as federal money wasn't used to pay for it -- the Stupak amendment prohibits the public option from providing the coverage at all.
The good news for the pro-choice movement is that Nelson probably doesn't have the votes to add his amendment to the Senate bill. But this issue isn't going away yet.
Under legislation approved Monday night by Baltimore's city council, crisis pregnancy centers that do not offer referrals for abortion or birth control would be required to post signs saying as much. It seems like such a reasonable plea for transparency! After all, these types of centers are infamous for engaging in religiously- and politically-motivated deception of pregnant women -- and yet, if the city's mayor signs the measure, it will be the very first law of its kind in the U.S.
Time and again, we've written about how crisis pregnancy centers masquerade as legitimate healthcare facilities and target young, poor and minority women by offering free pregnancy tests and counseling. In reality, these centers, which are often staffed by unqualified volunteers, provide medical misinformation as a means of coercing women into going through with a pregnancy and, in some cases, to give the baby up for adoption (to a good Christian family, natch). Some clinics have been found to delay pregnancy test results so they can first subject patients to graphic anti-abortion imagery and propaganda.
This measure is bolstered by more than crisis pregnancy centers' well-established reputation nationwide: Last year, the NARAL Pro-Choice Fund sent staff members into 11 Maryland centers in particular to pose as potential patients and reported that "every CPC visited provided misleading or, in some cases completely false, information" about abortion and birth control." For good measure, the clinics also threw in "emotionally manipulative counseling" (for example, one worker told an investigator, "You need to come meet your baby before deciding what to do"). Worse yet, many clinics "purposefully schedule sonogram appointments two-three weeks after the initial appointment to ensure that there will be a heartbeat and that the pregnancy is larger than a grain of rice." (If you're short on outrage today, I highly recommend reading the report in its entirety.)
What makes these centers so pernicious is that they calculatedly project "an aura of medical authority," as the NARAL report puts it, when in reality they are largely "amateur-run." This measure aims to chip away at that facade. Frankly, the legislation could go much farther and actually require them to cop to the totality of their dishonesty -- these clinics should be happy they're getting off so easy.
What if you threw a protest and nobody came? Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry did just that in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the first stop on a planned 13-city tour in which Terry intends to inform people that the senate healthcare reform bill "will essentially fund abortions." According to the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, "A few reporters and photographers, Terry and two passersby were the whole rally. Terry's target, U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh and Bayh's entire staff inside the E. Ross Adair Federal Building, were no-shows." "
I'm really not qualified to speculate about what goes on in the minds of anti-choice protesters, but here are a few possible reasons why folks didn't show up for Terry's rally:
1) He's full of crap. As Tracy Clark-Flory wrote in Broadsheet last week, "The key details of the Senate bill are as follows: Both public and private plans are allowed to offer abortion coverage. It empowers consumers to use government subsidies to purchase insurance that covers abortion, but requires that their premiums (and not federal funds) pay for the actual procedures. The Health and Human Services Secretary is charged with evaluating plans to ensure that taxpayers do not pay for abortions."
2) "Taxpayers shouldn't have to fund things they find morally repugnant" is always a weak argument, but it's especially weak right now. I mean, I could give you a list of a dozen things I'm appalled to fund indirectly with my taxes, but these days, do I really need to enumerate any beyond "war" and "other war"? Oh, hell, let's throw in executions, too. Because if you really want anyone to take your "taxes shouldn't fund murder" complaint seriously, we've got a whole lot of dead autonomous human beings to account for at both the federal and state levels before we even begin discussing fetal personhood.
3) Most disturbingly, he's threatening violence, and not even trying to be subtle about it.
"If the U.S. Senate passes this bill and they try and force Americans to pay for child-killing by abortion, they are sowing the seeds of violence in this country," Terry said from the sidewalk in front of the Federal Building.
"We fought a war over slavery, we fought a war over a tea tax. What do people think will happen if they try to force us to pay for murder?"
Um, those most fiercely opposed to murder will start... murdering? Even more than they already have? That sure seems to be what you're saying, there, buddy. And despite a revolting amount of support for the monsters who assassinate abortion providers, most mainstream anti-choicers are not on board with that. At least, not openly.
But please, Randall Terry, do carry on with your campaign to raise awareness about made-up issues. We at Broadsheet wish you every bit as much success as you've already had.
The abortion doctor
Susan Wicklund has received death threats and worn a bulletproof vest to work. But what really scares her, she writes in "This Common Secret," is the war on reproductive rights.
By Eryn Loeb, Salon
How abortion changed the world
From a sketchy underground doctor to the American fight against communism, a look at the unlikely forces that helped spread global family planning.
By Michelle Goldberg, Salon
What's wrong with the new pro-lifers
The progressive anti-abortion movement still doesn't truly value the life and identity of the mother.
By Frances Kissling, Salon
Is there a next generation of abortion providers?
As if the threat of violence and divisive politics weren't enough, getting trained is almost impossible.
By Kate Harding, Salon
When abortion was a crime
Reagan, an assistant professor of history, medicine and women's studies at the University of Illinois, dedicates her disturbing work on abortion in America before Roe v. Wade to "the lives of... women who died trying to control their reproduction."
The abortion debate
An incredibly interesting debate that looks at both the pros and cons of abortion from a secularist viewpoint.
Scientology Accused of Forced Abortions, Crimes in Oz
RNC Ditches Employee Abortion Coverage 
Did Health Reform Have To Come At the Cost Our Rights?
The Stupak Effect on Women's Health