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 December, 2005 |
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Introduction by Richard Farson Welcome to our ILF interview with Gloria Feldt, president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and valued Fellow of the ILF. Many of you are familiar with Gloria from her days as a participant in our School of Management and Strategic Studies, when she was head of Planned Parenthood in Arizona. Some of you will even remember participating in our Task Force on Abortion, in 1989, a most rewarding effort that Gloria and Don Straus spearheaded. A few years ago she was selected to head the entire Planned Parenthood organization, a position not only with high visibility, but with great influence on the directions the US takes on issues of reproductive biology. She has just published a compelling book on her work, Behind Every Choice Is A Story. We are indeed fortunate to have her with us during this particular time, when the issues she addresses are so much on the minds of Americans. Welcome, Gloria. We are so pleased to have you with us. Gloria, I'll assert my privilege and ask the first question. The timing for this interview coincides with several current events which thrust abortion to the front pages again. Sunday's NY Times lead story is on the move to influence the likely Supreme Court appointments that President Bush may make at the end of this current session of the Court, and abortion may be the main theme determining those efforts. At the same time, legislation about late term abortion is about to clear the Congress, and the president is on record saying that he will sign it. And we have the capture of the alleged serial bomber of several abortion clinics, Eric Rudolf, a capture illustrating the support such activities have with a segment of our population who side with him. All in all, a busy time for you. I wonder how you cope with all this, which you may want to tell us about as we go along. But my first question has to do with the legislative implications of the bill coming out of Congress and the efforts to influence the appointments of the Supreme Court justices. What do you see as the likely scenario as these actions play out on the American scene? Gloria Feldt I find that sometimes people who do not deal with reproductive rights and health issues (read that sex, love, relationships, family, women, and all that warm fuzzy stuff, as well as the cold logic of laws, demographics, and rights) are reluctant to get into this topic for fear of -- what? I don't know. I have never known you all to be reluctant to get into any topic, but I nevertheless want to start with this welcome and invitation to take any point of view or ask any question. That, after all, is what choice is all about. Let me start answering Dick's questions with a status report on some other current events. Tomorrow I will speak at a press conference in Washington with several principals of other organizations to announce out plans to hold the largest pro-choice march -- perhaps the largest march -- ever. It will be in Washington DC April 24, 2004. This march has become necessary because there are so many threats aligned to eliminate reproductive rights, more than at any time in my 30-year career with Planned Parenthood. It is my perspective that we won the right to make our own childbearing choices without government intrusion from the top down the first time. We're going to have to win it all over again from the bottom up. It's a classic lesson in democracy 101. Dick's short list of some of the pressing issues of the day lays out a sampling of the assaults. The abortion ban bill coming out of Congress actually is the first time Congress has criminalized any medical procedure. Its restrictions vaguely apply to a variety of procedures that may be used early in pregnancy as well as later, and it fails to have an exception for women's health. Planned Parenthood will challenge it in court the day president Bush signs it. It is unconstitutional by the standard of today's Supreme Court. But the strategy of its sponsors is a) to create an issue where there is none and b) to change the courts in hopes that when the bill gets to the Supreme Court, it will be a different Court that will use it to reverse Roe v Wade. Because Roe asserts a constitutional right to privacy, if it is reversed, along with it will go the rest of reproductive rights such as the right to contraception as defined in Griswold v Connecticut and subsequent decisions. I'll get to the issues of what reversal would mean in real life and the phenomenon of violence in another response.
Participant Participant Participant Participant As I think you know, I greatly admire both your "elan vital" and your willingness to plunge into the middle of arguments which will determine the kind of country we are and can become. Because of my international bent, I'll be especially interested in learning how you connect our national debates (on everything from "partial birth" to the composition of the Supreme Court) with what's going on in other cultures and polities. How, for example, should we relate our preoccupation with reproductive rights to the preoccupation of more than half the world's population (including, perhaps especially, the women in developing countries) with poverty -- which, for the poor, is bound to be problem No. 1?
Participant As a staunch and long time supporter of women's rights in all arenas, I find today's climate unnerving and threatening to all of us. But, I find it more difficult to be as adamant about my own position as I was so many years ago. Partially that is because I see our society today as requiring more compromise than before. Do you seen any viable way in which both sides can have some sense of accommodation for their beliefs? I confess that I don't.
Gloria Feldt I can already see an interesting conversation to be had relating Walt's question about declining population growth and Don's unspoken (but I know it's coming :-) comments about focusing on population as the key and core issue. Talk to you all in a few hours.
Gloria Feldt I believe that another of the most effective drivers toward population stabilization has been the impact of the UN conferences on Population and Development in Cairo almost 10 years ago (the nations of the world committed to the notion that women's health and development are integrally aligned, and that reproductive health is an essential part of both) and the 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing a year later (which solidified that commitment and added that women's rights are human rights). The Cairo Programme of Action is far from realized. Indeed, the Bush administration recently tried to unilaterally withdraw the U.S.'s support for it but was soundly rebuffed by the other countries assembled in Bangkok to review progress. My experience has always been that if you give women even half a chance to limit the number and spacing of children, they will jump at it. To Harlan's question, the connection between population growth, women's rights and health, and poverty requires us to look at the realities of where population continues to grow at a fast clip. In the developing world, where the largest childbearing generation in history is in its prime reproductive years, 150 million married women would limit their family size or space their families if they had access to contraception. Throughout the world, 300 million couples are not able to get the family planning services and contraceptives they want. In the words of Rohsana Kahondokar, a lawyer in Bangladesh, where contraceptive use went from 3 percent of the population to 60 percent in 25 years: *** Family planning leads to economy planning leads to national planning. And central to it all is the changing role of women. After all, a country cannot develop with the participation of only half its citizens. Participant My modified position, still not quite that accepted by PPFA, is that Planned Parenthood should embrace all of the many and interlocked impacts of productivity, feminism, sex, health, demographic change and perhaps others. Each of the above have organizations with focused concerns on their more limited agendas -- as were my personal concerns for population going back the early days of our discussions. I stress this again today when abortion has taken such a focused place on discussions having to do with almost all of the above special interests. I believe every one of the above special interest groups would probably be more active allies than they are today in your valiant fight for CHOICE if you could include population as legitimate and accepted in your basket of concerns. But you have many other more pressing concerns today. I don't want to derail what I feel sure is a rich basket of exciting current stories and campaigns.
Gloria Feldt I think that the accommodations can come around support for family planning, comprehensive sex education, and other prevention programs such as counseling for parents and parenthood. That, of course, is what Planned Parenthood spends most of its time doing and the general public understands and appreciates that. The accommodations don't come from the anti-choice side with a few notable exceptions like Sen. Harry Reid's sponsorship of Contraceptive Equity legislation despite (because of?) his opposition to abortion. I'll leave for a next submission why that is, but perhaps some of you would like to take a stab at answering in the meanwhile.
Participant Participant Second issue: I am concerned that much of the drop in child rate has been motivated by economic necessity rather than a free choice. A choice of the market over children forced because having children is no longer economically as viable. (and this is all mixed up with the shift of the locus of society out of the home, so being at home had become much less developmental for the woman). The winner here might be seen more as the economy and the idea of careers than it is development of real options for leisure and social life. Women who wan to b artists have a hard a time supporting themselves as women who chose to be mothers. Where is the real "choice?" What is meant as "realism" is to accept the reality of the career system as the only game in town. Does PP have a deeper critique of these longer term trends in society, the implications for women and the meaning of freedom? And Hi.
Gloria Feldt Dick asked about why there is such an alignment around the assaults on reproductive rights and healthcare. I must tell you that when I started to write my book, Behind Every Choice Is a Story, I did it largely because I thought there was a need to change the discourse on these issues from polarized to personalized and humanized. Real human life is lived one person, one story at a time after all, not in the courts or Congress. By the time I had finished it, I realized that is was in fact urgent that I sound the clarion call and to engage people in recognizing both the threats and what they need to do about them. If you have checked into the War on Women document that is on the http://www.plannedparenthood.org website, you will see in chilling detail that this is no mere laundry list of attacks. It is a multi-part strategy -- I liken it to a pernicious web -- that is a core element of the Bush administration's agenda. And for the first time, the President, the Congress, and an increasing number of the Federal courts are aligned around this agenda. Dick wonders why. I believe a number of factors have converged. First, there is the complacency of the public, including the voting public, who simply can't believe matters they think are reasonable and settled can be so drastically changed. This has also allowed the Republican party's unholy alliance with the religious political extremists on the right to transform the party of individual liberties into one prepared to change the nation into a theocracy. Second, I think that the reproductive rights movement has to own some fo the responsibility for the complacency by being too defensive and not continuing to advance a bold and aggressive agenda during the 30 years since Roe was decided. I have personally spent much of my time and organizational good will since becoming PPFA's president promoting a proactive agenda and building a large and sophisticated grassroots activist network. I'm always telling folks we should be thermostats, not thermometers, that we must set the terms of the debate rather than responding to them. And we have actually accomplished a good deal, especially in the states, over the last few years but this is something the media rarely reports so it is not surprising that you don't reference it. But now having done the requisite owning up to our strategic errors, I will point out that most of the current climate is not of our own making, even though we must take is as it is and climb huge mountains now to change it. First, remember that Al Gore won the popular vote. The majority of voters voted for pro-choice candidates. Ralph Nader and the U.S. Supreme Court made Bush president, along with Gore's own amazing ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Second, there was 9-11, and that changed everything in terms of Bush's ability to advance his agenda. Then there was the terrible tragedy of Paul Wellstone's death. Paul would have won that race, and that would have set a very different tone for the senate. The Republicans got their bloggers going and they spun the story of the Wellstone funeral cum campaign rhetoric to whip up public disdain for the Democrats' candidates in other states as well. And then they worked their grassroots, which is how democracy should be, while the Democrats watched the polls. So here we are. It's not fair but it is the reality we must now change. Worms do turn and I am a firm believer that we can and must work in the democratic process to help turn them. There is much more I could say, but this missive is already much too long.
Gloria Feldt First off, the web allows for uncensored (with the exception of some schools and libraries) access to websites like our http://www.teenwire.com , the Kaiser Foundation's websites, and others. Second, parents today by and large want to do a better job of talking with their children than our parents did for us. So programming for parents makes a great difference. When former Surgeon General David Satcher issued his report on sexual health and sexual responsibility (just before Bush fired him), he set off a great policy initiative that he continues now that he is in the private sector. Planned Parenthood has launched a plan to engage first activist parents and later the public in advancing the key parts of this report, with a long term goal of changing how American's deal with sex to a healthier and more realistic perspective similar to most other industrialized nations that have far fewer of the sexuality-related problems than we do. Am I getting to the heart of your question, Dick?
Participant Gloria Feldt To Don's point, you made me think of how the Seinfeld show was successful because it was, as the hype said, "about nothing". Conversely, the reproductive rights movement is about everything. Everything human, at least. Sex, love, family, relationships, community, health, gender, freedom, demographics, environment, economics, and even in the broadest sense national security as a result of the economic, environmental resource, and demographic factors. That's why it applies to everybody but is evasive of precise definition. I don't think reproductive rights quite does it, but it's short. Maybe you all can come up with a brilliant alternative -- help me out on that! I do know that it is no longer merely Family planning, however, even though Margaret Sanger had eventually narrowed it to "birth control" in an effort to mainstream it. She was successful by narrowing, but today we can only be successful by broadening as Don suggests. For Sanger in the early 20th century and for me in the early 21st, the real crux of the matter is simply as she said: "No woman can call herself free unless she can own and control her own body. No woman can call herself free unless she can decide for herself whether and when to become a mother."
Participant Gloria Feldt I'll suggest that it is about power when you strip it back to its core. About gender power balance and about the power to control that balance. Although the question is usually framed as "life" versus "choice", it is really about who has control over a woman's power to create life. Fear of the power of women's sexuality usually figures into the mix. I suspect this goes very deep into the human psyche as it evolved in ancient cultures which were in awe of this power before they even knew what caused pregnancy, and in which over time men gained supremacy over women's power to create life by creating patriarchies. The Catholic Church and religious fundamentalists of all stripes today exemplify the groups that most place women into constricted roles and often even vilify and marginalize us. Some even maim us -- as in cultures that practice female genital cutting and excise the clitoris because they so fear and hate women's power and sexuality. Your next question will be: then why are some women also opposed to their own right to choose. I agree with sociologist Kristen Luker that it is because they are women who feel they have more to lose personally by changing the power balance than to gain. That has to do with their socioeconomic status (is their work a blessing to them or a curse, a part of their self-fulfillment or a symbol of their lower status?), their worldview about sex (is is primarily for procreation or for pleasure and relationship?), and their worldview about women's place (is being a mother the ultimate source of meaning or is motherhood one of several valid and meaningful roles?). Day after day, it happens that some of both the anti-choice women I have described and men who share those beliefs find themselves discovering that they feel differently when it is their own situations at stake. Sometimes they go back to picketing afterward. Sometimes they are intellectually honest enough to say they learned something from their experience.
Gloria Feldt In agrarian cultures, children are perceived as wealth; in industrialized cultures, children are perceived as cost. That's why your woman artist example is valid but has to be put into the perspective that she has the opportunity to be an artist in the first place. And that's why industrialization generally correlates with a demographic transition to smaller family size, regardless of laws and technologies. I would like to see a world in which social and financial supports exist to ensure that any woman can have health care for herself and her family without going bankrupt, and that every woman has the necessary social and financial supports, whatever her choice about having or not having a child. That sort of gets us back to Bush's war on women, doesn't it?
Participant Gloria Feldt Watts Wacker, the futurist, is fond of saying "The fastest route to self esteem is to stand up for what you believe." Watts has also been a clinic escort for over a decade. I think he has it right. I do not make light of the physical danger, and I certainly don't court it. My life has been threatened, my home has been picketed, my workplace has been bombed (though never very successfully). I have grandchildren and I intend to dance at their weddings. But as the anti-choice violence escalated from harassment to vandalism to murder, I became more resolute that terrorism and terrorists should never be allowed to win by default; they would never deter me from what I think is right. Thank goodness I have a spouse who shares this view and has both supported and participated with me in every way. And now of course, I am so cognizant that millions of people take their cues from how I respond. If I want Planned Parenthood supporters, activists, and even patients to exhibit the courage of their convictions, then I'd darn well better exhibit mine in a very public and unequivocal way. So we spend ever more of our precious resources on security. And now since 9-11 it is obvious to everyone that people can do terrible things in the name of their ideologies -- thus, the chapter entitled "Murder in the Name of Life" in my book, so we are kind of in this boat together. What does make me lose heart is not physical danger but the apathy of voters, the marginalizaton of reproductive rights by politicians, the reduction of the issues to a polarized abortion debate by the media, the unwillingness of civic leaders to stand with me to denounce anti-choice attacks and to support what so many of them say to me privately they believe, and the occasional wimpyness of my constituency which, being pro-choice and tolerant, has a hard time asserting moral certitude. Those are the things that make me feel like I'm pushing that proverbial rock uphill. Everywhere I speak or attend a function large or small, someone comes up to me and says "Planned Parenthood saved my life", and then proceeds to tell me her or his story, often with tears, often with great joy, and often letting me know that this story has been kept bottled up inside for a long time. With that, all the frustrations melt away, and I again realize how fortunate I am to be able to make even a small contribution to something so important.
Participant Boy Gloria, with such eloquent comments as the one preceding this one, it's kind of daunting to make an entry! I just want to go on record as saying I've read Gloria's book cover to cover and it is fantastic -- totally engaging -- particularly since it does, as she says, focus on the human stories as well as the larger issues. I'd also like to point out that Watts says that his *wife* was the person who taught him that the fastest route to self-esteem is to stand up for what you believe! See, all these female-philes have the best quotes. I've had the distinct privilege of doing some work with PPFA over the past few years in the area of their Vision for 2025. Gloria, I think this crew would be really inspired to hear about the goals the organization has for 2025...would you share them?
Participant I think I've become the Chicken Little in this group, but, boy, do I think you have a tough pull ahead of you. Some people think that there may be one or two Supreme Court judges resigning at the end of the current session, this month. And with Bush riding high in the polls, he may be able to get away with a Scalia court. So my question is, Gloria, do you think that America has become so accustomed to the freedom given women by Roe v. Wade that no matter who they put on the court, the public would revolt if it should be overturned? Or is the Christian right so strong that they could pull it off? What's the likely scenario? It certainly does appear that Bush will make one or two appointments, eventually.
Gloria Feldt I am about to go pack to leave early tomorrow for a book signing in Cleveland, but I will get the goals put into this conference tomorrow. As to Mr. Chicken Little, actually you are right, the sky is falling. I believe the demise of Roe may well happen and that would be a sort of pro-choice Pearl Harbor, even though I wish people would rise up well before that. I think we won reproductive freedom from the top down the first time and we have to win it from the bottom up this time. We have a new Freedom of Choice Act ready to codify the principles of Roe, or what we thought Roe was in 1973. It may take a generation to get it passed in the states and Congress. And mark your calendars for April 25, 2004. The largest pro-choice march ever will be held in Washington. Yes, Mary, we have to do it again! (Mary and I marched together in 1992.) Here's another theory: A colleague suggested to me today that Bush does not want to have to appoint a Supreme Court Justice until after the 2004 elections because he recognizes the strength of our organized opposition to any nominee who would want to overturn Roe. She may well be right.
Participant Gloria Feldt THE PLANNED PARENTHOOD PROMISE: CREATING HOPE FOR HUMANITY,THE FREEDOM TO DREAM, TO MAKE CHOICES, AND TO LIVE IN PEACE WITH OUR PLANET GOALS FOR 2025 First: Planned Parenthood will ensure that sexuality is understood as an essential, lifelong aspect of being human and that it is celebrated with respect, openness, and mutuality. Second: Planned Parenthood will ensure access to reproductive and sexual health care for all. Third: Planned Parenthood will secure passage of laws and policies, including state and federal constitutional amendments, that guarantee reproductive freedom for all. Fourth: Planned Parenthood will ensure worldwide implementation of a human rights and well-being agenda as currently expressed in the Cairo Agreement, with the United States fulfilling its financial commitment and implementing those principles. Fifth: Planned Parenthood will control a successful, diversified media company that creates and distributes the most popular, critically acclaimed health and sexuality programming. Sixth: Planned Parenthood will be the model for embracing diversity and expanding the decision-making power base of its stakeholders. Seventh: Planned Parenthood will be a significant catalyst for the development and universal dissemination of new reproductive technologies. Eighth: Planned Parenthood will be an authoritative voice on bioethical standards related to reproductive health and sexuality. Ninth: Planned Parenthood will build the largest donor and citizen activist base of any social movement in this country. Tenth: Planned Parenthood will be acknowledged as one of the ten best places to work and volunteer. These were developed after a process of conversation throughout the organization, including a great deal of input from experts in the various fields and people from outside Planned Parenthood.
Participant Further thanks on behalf of Alex, who should find the world a better place because of PPFA's efforts. Having a child has made me more aware than ever the importance of entering into the decision in a conscious, informed manner. It is a great privilege and an even greater responsibility that should never be taken lightly. Thanks for being a leader in the movement to really value and respect children by making certain that their parents are eagerly awaiting their arrival in the world.
Participant Participant Participant -END-
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