The Republican-led 112th Congress began the legislative session with what many liberals characterized as a “war against women” which ranged from an attempt to redefine rape as “forcible rape” to a push to eliminate all federal funding for family planning services. A renewed effort to limit access to reproductive health services has fired up legislators, the media, and interest groups alike. This debate sheds light on the political and ideological tactics of anti-choice legislators and has consequently challenged pro-choice groups like Planned Parenthood to improve their political strategy.
Political Games Beyond Abortion
The latest attack on reproductive health is fundamentally new in its targeting of non-abortion healthcare services. These include HIV testing, birth control, cervical cancer screenings and other preventative services. Elaine Kamarck, lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, sees this as an extension of the healthcare debate: “The Stupak Amendment was business as usual. The attack on non-abortion funding isn’t. That’s what’s fundamentally new. They’re trying to make the whole process of reproductive health counseling much harder because of the opposition to abortion.” Micole Allekotte, a health law fellow at the National Women’s Law Center, told the HPR that Republicans “have begun to wage a war on contraception by pushing to eliminate funding for Title X programs, which provide contraception and cancer screening to women facing financial hardship.”
Uniting the Right
Attacks on funding for reproductive health strategically join social and fiscal conservatives. Representative Mike Pence (R-IN), whose appropriations bill amendment to remove all federal funding from Planned Parenthood passed 240-185 in the House on February 18, has been quoted as asking “What is more fiscally responsible than denying any and all funding to Planned Parenthood of America?”. Kamarck told the HPR, “The strategy of the Republican Party is to play to their Christian Right base that is very much opposed to abortion. The Tea Party is not interested in social issues as much as it is interested with big government and deficit reduction.” The attacks on Planned Parenthood have become a way for the Republican Party to bring together two of its most powerful factions.
An ideological opposition to abortion under the cover of fiscal responsibility drives the debate. To extend the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortion except in extreme cases, “legislators who are opposed to women being able to access abortion are pushing to pass laws that eliminate private insurance market coverage of abortion,” Allekotte told the HPR. The 2012 presidential election is an implicit part of the debate. “You can expect that as people think about the 2012 election and think about the Republican primary they’re going to want to be on the right side of the issue. You will see a variety of creative attempts, this being one, to allow Congressmen to have what are seen to be anti-abortion votes,” said Kamark. The push to defund reproductive health services is not so much about fiscal responsibility as it is about ideological and political motivations. Harvard Kennedy School lecturer on public policy David King told the HPR, “The fight against Planned Parenthood is a clever political ploy to try and get pro-choice groups to spend a lot of time and energy defending Planned Parenthood.”
The Defensive Strategy
Playing defense is not new for the pro-choice movement, but the current battle brings new challenges. “Polling shows that over the past few decades, the hard line pro-life group has in fact grown in the electorate. The pro-choice movement has lost momentum,” Kamarck told the HPR. According to Gina Glantz, chair of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, “This is a drumbeat that has always gone on, but now the anti-choice community is emboldened by the number of members who were elected in the last cycle who create a much stronger anti-choice caucus.”
With large opposition in the House, and a narrow margin of support in the Senate, pro-choice groups have realized the need to reevaluate their political strategy to build more support during this Congressional session. Historically criticized for being an organization dominated by older white women, Planned Parenthood has expanded and diversified its base because of the new attacks. “As of February 18, 660,000 people have signed emails to Congress–nearly 20 percent from people of color; 19 percent are male, average age low 30’s, 60 percent new to Planned Parenthood,” said Glantz. She also expressed optimism in the fact that “there have been people from all across the country who have written have emailed and want to know what they can do … The results of the assault on Planned Parenthood prove that in every crisis there is an opportunity.”