As regular readers will know, I’m a trustee of the Family Planning Association (FPA), a key advocate in the fight to decriminalize abortion in the UK, including in Northern Ireland. The fight for reproductive rights is a global one, so I had a particular interest in meeting with groups campaigning for the same thing in America. Back in September I went out campaigning with NARAL Pro-Choice Oregon, and in November I met with Sari Stevens and Laura Weis, Executive Director of Planned Parenthood Pennsylvania’s political arm and Communications Manager respectively, to find out what that fight is like for them.
Planned Parenthood has been providing health services in Pennsylvania for about 90 years. There are 28 health centers run by three affiliate organisations providing comprehensive family planning and health care for women, men and teens. Services vary across centers but include abortion services, birth control, sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing and prevention, pregnancy support, cervical cancer screenings, trans health services and general health check-ups. They are a ‘safety net’ provider, so they do not turn away anyone who comes to them for help, including low income, uninsured or under-insured people. Planned Parenthood Pennsylvania Advocates has existed in different forms, including today as a 501(c)4, a Political Action Committee (PAC) and a ‘Super PAC’, since 1974, the year after the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling.
“Our role,” Sari says, “is to protect our affiliates, protect our health centers, protect our patients’ ability to access that healthcare, and then more broadly protect Pennsylvanians’ ability to access reproductive healthcare.” She underlines why this is important; “There are parts of the state where we are the only provider offering these services so it makes the attacks on Planned Parenthood and the attacks on family planning care at a state and federal level all the more real, because I know that in Bucks County there would be thousands of women without access to birth control, very basic healthcare. And we’ve seen places where care has already been lost, so we don’t need to imagine what’s going to happen, we know what’s going to happen.” One example often cited is the spike in HIV rates in Indiana after cuts to Planned Parenthood and public health funding.
Laura and Sari talk me through the recent history of abortion policy in Pennsylvania, which was the site of another landmark court ruling in 1992, Planned Parenthood v Casey, which contested some restrictive rules around consent and the definition of medical emergency in the state’s law. For almost twenty years there were no more substantive attacks on abortion rights. Then in 2010, they tell me, “we had an anti-choice legislature and an anti-choice governor for the first time in a long time, and it was just like a national trend – the floodgates opened.” Two anti-abortion bills were signed into law; one, referred to as a ‘TRAP’ law – Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers – created onerous and bureaucratic conditions for family planning providers to comply with, while another banned insurance coverage for abortion services purchased through the Affordable Care Act. I ask why this all kicked off when it did; “We know why it happened [in 2010]. They, our opponents, had very diligently worked to control the redistricting process. So when they redistricted us in 2010, that was the second decade that they’d done it and they were able to draw maps that were completely unreflective of the population, and then they controlled the process. And that’s a 10 year cycle – it was methodical, and smart, and it worked.” If you google “REDMAP” you will find a lot more on this from Republican and Democrat perspectives, it’s quite a rabbit hole.
But Sari, Laura and their colleagues have worked strategically, methodically and exhaustively to counter these attacks, with key stepping stones and targets to make sure they win. “We knew we had 10 years to fix where we were. We knew we had to firstly survive four years, we had to elect a Governor in 2014 – check, did that [Tom Wolf, a former Planned Parenthood volunteer himself]. In 2015 we needed to elect a State Supreme Court as a backstop to any case law if we lost Roe v Wade. With Brett Kavanaugh – the State Supreme Court being in progressive democratic hands could serve as a secondary backstop. It is also the fifth member of our redistricting commission, so that means that we would control redrawing the lines, which occurs after our census in 2020. Then we needed to re-elect the Governor in 2018 and start to win big in the legislature, did that last Tuesday. And now we need to have an accurate census, draw better lines, then we can take back the legislature. That’s our 11 year journey to dig out of the hole, but thus far we have checked every box. It’s grueling, but we’re on a trajectory to fix it.”
The organization works substantially through its network of individual supporters, who Laura describes as passionate people, keen to take action. And they, along with stories from patients and people who shouldn’t be denied care, will remain central to Planned Parenthood’s work as challenges continue. And they will continue; while there’s positive change in Pennsylvania, states to the west and south may lose access to care. “We’re in a position geographically to absorb that patient population, which is sort of a new reality we’re living in,” says Sari. The courts have been methodical in lining up cases to challenge Roe v Wade as well, and states like West Virginia have passed so-called ‘trigger’ laws that will automatically ban abortion in the event that ruling falls. Others retain pre-ruling laws that will kick back in.
Nevertheless, there is optimism, power and solidarity. In Sari’s words: “We do awesome work, and we’re winning, and we have a plan. Our media coverage is amazing, and we just won giant amounts of races, and our health services are open and healthy, and our governor is pushing back on the Trump administration. If you can clear out the bad you can see that there’s actually really great work happening, and folks are incredibly engaged on the ground and motivated. There’s camaraderie in the hell too, you know what I mean? Like you’ve gone through something together.”
Voluntary Action and Other Animals 