When Planned Parenthood tried to bully a corporate donor… and lost
Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure would have done well to look back at Planned Parenthood’s history of nasty break-ups to get a better handle on what was ahead.
Back in the pre-Internet dinosaur days 22 years ago, Planned Parenthood’s tactics may have been different, but its assault was just as grand when it learned AT&T was planning to disconnect its service.
The backdrop, from the Seattle Times, April 13, 1990:
AT&T announced April 2 that it would no longer provide money for the teen educational programs of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America because of the organization’s increasingly public stand on abortion.
Planned Parenthood had been a recipient of AT&T funding for 25 years. Last year the organization received $50,000 from AT&T, [Walt] Greenwood [AT&T’s public relations director] said.
Planned Parenthood immediately accused the company of “corporate cowardice” for caving in to the demands of a small group of anti-abortionists.
Recently, AT&T had been the focus of a letter-writing campaign and threatened boycott by the Christian Action Council of Falls Church, Va.
Reynold Levy, corporate vice president of the AT&T Foundation, the firm’s philanthropic arm, said despite the fact that AT&T gifts were aimed at helping families and teen-age parents, it had proven impossible to pursue such ends through Planned Parenthood without being identified in the public mind with Planned Parenthood’s political activity.
He said he had been told late yesterday that AT&T officials in New York had no intention of reversing the company’s stand.
Bear in mind the amount AT&T was rescinding: $50,000 per year. Nevertheless, Planned Parenthood proceeded to take out full page ads, for $40,000 each, in Investor’s Daily, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and USA Today.
Here for the first time is a screen shot of that ad on the Internet, courtesy of Doug Scott, president of Life Decisions International, who spent hours going through files to find it…
Note the familiar talking points, that AT&T had “caved in to anti-choice extremists” and “bullying tactics” and had “decided to leave teens at risk,” identical in so many words to its charges two decades later, including that Komen was leaving women at risk.
Also note the two coupons, one to go to AT&T in protest, and the other to go to PP with a donation. Of course, PP also launched a fundraising effort when assaulting Komen.
Faye Wattleton was Planned Parenthood’s president at the time. Wattleton took to the airwaves to pressure AT&T, appearing on NBC Today, the CBS Morning News, CBS Evening News, ABC World News Tonight, and the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, to name some.
PP enlisted the help of its friends in Congress, one of whom it also enlisted for help in its battle against Komen: Barbara Boxer, who at the time was a congresswoman and is now a senator.
With the Komen debacle so fresh in our minds, we may think we have a little understanding of the tremendous pressure PP placed on AT&T.
But that public battle went on for three years. Pro-Planned Parenthood AT&T shareholders proposed resolutions in support of the abortion giant at the annual shareholders meeting in 1990, 1991, 1992, and 1993. When in 1993 they again failed to get a vote, PP finally moved on.
In an enlightening commentary in the Milwaukee Journal, Wattleton explained PP’s rationale for attacking AT&T:
There was no other option to take – and let me explain to you why. We had been in conversation with AT&T for a number of months – as a matter of fact, more than a year, about the concerns they had about the opposition….
We said to them, “you can’t avoid this by defunding. This is an issue that will not go away – it will only give life and strength to people who think that they can push you around….
In other words, Planned Parenthood simply could not let pro-lifers win.
But that time we did.
Why? In his book, Bad Choices: A Look Inside Planned Parenthood, Doug Scott wrote:
Despite the expensive and volatile media campaign launched by Planned Parenthood, AT&T held firm. Its spokesmen were eloquent in explaining the company position.
Komen’s leadership obviously did not hold firm. And Komen CEO Nancy Brinker fumbled and waffled.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
SGK wakes up one moring and discovers she has been sleeping with the enemy.
SGK attempts to put pp away quietly and pp gives her a public smackdown that every pimp would be proud of.
In a related note: DemocRATs for Life are shocked, Shocked, SHOCKED! that O’bama hellthcare contained provisions that would force priviate entities to provide abortifacient contraceptions.
DemocRATs for Life?!?!?
Isn’t that an oxymoron?
Kind of like ‘Vegans for Veal’!
But then rats do eat their own offspring.
I always thought it was so ironic that Faye Wattleton was president of Planned Parenthood…
If Margaret Sanger had her way, Faye Wattleton would never even have been born!
I guess Corporations still had backbones 22 years ago….(sigh).
“Pro-life” groups have been going after various corporations and nonprofits for decades. They attacked Komen back in 2005 for having the gall to donate a mammography machine to PP:
“Pro Life Waco, for example, failed to generate the same interest this year when it went after the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, the large Texas-based breast cancer nonprofit. The pro-life group opposed the Komen grant of a mammography machine to a local Planned Parenthood. But Nancy G. Brinker, Komen’s founder, is a conservative Bush Pioneer who raised mega-dollars for the president’s campaigns and garnered an ambassadorship to Hungary in Bush’s first term. The conservative media barely touched the story.”
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12527
This article is a long, long list of corporations who have been attacked by pro-life mosquitos, but only now you’ve got one that is now infected with the PL malaria and will very possibly die. Stop trying to revise history when it’s online for everyone to see.
Considering AT&T’s customer service history – it’s no wonder they ‘hung up’ on PP!
SGK and pp have nothing but skirts to hide behind today.
The gals can’t blame the ‘good old boys’ and the glass ceiling for holding them down.
Female chauvinism and automisogynism. What an odd couple.
Plausability test:
Budget of pro-life Waco compared to pp waco, or ppfa or ppfi.
Budget of pro-life Waco compared to SGK.
The mosquito analogy works on when viewed thru this metric.
Neither SGK or pp are circling the drain.
But SGK may be slowly bleeding out from a hundred thousand self inflicted shots in the foot.
pp has not yet shown any signs of a even a single paper cut.
But the ‘dead babies r us’ mob goes apolplectic when even a dog barks at their sacred golden calf.
Oh and BTW it wasn’t that corporations had backbones 22 years ago. What they have now that they didn’t have back then was instant access to the deepest thoughts and beliefs of their customer base. The “pro-life cause” is an abject failure in the court of public opinion as 21st century technology has now shown. The vast majority of the voting, purchasing public uses birth control, needs birth control, desperately wants birth control, and in a deep recession wants and needs it even more than ever at an affordable rate and will NEVER align itself with a movement that opposes it. The more people lose their jobs and suffer during a down economy, the more will turn to affordable care and the more will use birth control.
This is less a battle values and money as it is about the free market conservative’s thinly veiled contempt for it. Right now, in this era of a down economy where people are losing jobs and homes, attacking PP and other affordable health centers is one of the worst things the “pro-life” movement can do. You should think this would be taken as a warning.
Everybody knows bullies only respond to strength. Obviously, Komen wasn’t ready to stand up.
Not a fan of AT&T, but sure am happy they hung up on Planned Parenthood! :D
a postdated bad check,
Now witch troll was it that decreed that this dispute was settled x amount of years ago?
If that were really the case then why are the trolls compelled to remind us how wrong and how counter productive our methohds are?
If you were correct and had a lick of sense you would encourage us in our folly.
Forgive us if we view your ‘helpful suggestions’ as disingenuine.
We just don’t believe you have the best interest of the pre-natal child at heart.
We don’t believe much of anything you assert.
Your father was a thief, a liar and a murderer from the beginning and you continue to do your father’s bidding.
You are rotten fruit that has not fallen far from the wormwood tree.
But we are aware that the devil can do a ladylike thing if she believes it advances her subversive agenda.
So we will offer up a test to see if you can be intellectually honest once in a row:
When your momma was pregnant with you, what species of embryo/fetus was present in her uterus?
Why didn’t they take the money they spent on the $40,000 ads and use it to replace the $50,000 for the teen programs, if they were so worried about teens at risk?
“vast majority”
ding ding ding! Take a shot everyone. It’s my new drinking game: everytime an abortion devotee uses the phrase “vast majority” take a drink! Soft drinks are ok for the teetotalers.
Hey, did you know the vast majority of pre-born human beings die during abortion? No, don’t drink, I’m a pro-lifer!
“Hey, did you know the vast majority of pre-born human beings die during abortion?”
So what. It’s your business, how? And Ninek, please provide us a You Tube link to your sidewalk “counseling.” It would be so entertaining to watch your histrionics. Please, please….
“Hey, did you know the vast majority of pre-born human beings die during abortion?”
So what. It’s your business, how?
LOL, wow. CC, the pillar of human rights, everywhere! Human beings are dying, in the womb, in wars, in abusive situations, you name it, but… it’s not really our business, because “so what” if other innocent humans are dying at the hands of their oppressors?
That quote by CC needs to be FRAMED, it’s such a good example of Things Pro-Choicers Actually Said.
When I first read “history of nasty break-ups”, one movie came instantly to mind: Fatal Attraction. PP is the Glenn Close character of Fatal Attraction. Boiled bunny kind of vicious when ‘wronged’. Corporate donors beware!
klynn73, I actually thought of that movie when writing this post.
Speaking of backbone, or lack thereof, here’s an interesting excerpt of a piece from the National Review titled, “Calling Bart Stupak”.
“…He of the staunch pro-life persuasion, who nonetheless gave the Obama administration an out in 2010 with his willingness to provide the final votes in the House to push Obamacare over the top? He exchanged those votes for an executive order—that from the very beginning obviously was going to be thrown in the figurative dumpster as soon as doing so proved convenient for Mr. Obama—to the effect that no taxpayer dollars or individual premiums were to be used for abortion services. In the wake of the administration’s decision to force Catholic and other institutions to cover abortifacients and other such “health” services in insurance plans, has anyone asked Mr. Stupak for his views on this? And whether he now regrets his surrender while in a position to stand for principle? Just asking.”
Their strategy depends on bluffing at times.
In San Francisco there were probably under 200 counter-protesters.
That’s down from years ago when there were probably tens of thousands.
They don’t have the support and the support they have is an elitist minority, just as youth defense says. It’s just that their bark is so big.
They are lapdogs of a corporate elitist minority that is scared of a public they cannot control
You know what is really sad about Obama supporters?
Some want to reduce the Black population-
they knew that is what a vote for Obama means.
Don’t vote for Obama.
So what. It’s your business, how?
This is particularly funny coming from a former child protective services worker. Did you not hear similar words from parents you were investigating?
This situation just shows how we must stand for what is right no matter what obstacles come our way. There are several scriptures that support this, but the first one that comes to mind is this: “And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” (Galatians 6:9) Note that it says, “IF we faint not.”
And look at AT&T! They are one one of the biggest corporations in the country and until recently had a monopoly on the lucrative iPhone.
If Komen/ Karen Handel hadn’t backed down, who knows what would have happened? It might have looked like we were losing in the beginning, but God would have given us the victory in the long run. I know not all pro-lifers reading this are Christians, but even if you are a secular pro-lifer, you might still believe in something called karma and trust me, Planned Parenthood will one day get what it deserves.
AT&T does allow for gay partners today, though.
Which is WONDERFUL!!!!
I also noticed on the PP ‘silver’ ribbon (the ribbon’s actually gray colored) campaign web page the PP strategy includes pitting proLIFE Republicans against proLFIE Democrats and that’s how they think they will win the campaign.
Serious pro-LIFERS see that there are just as many pro-abortion republicans that would vote for obama and other so-called ‘health care,’ initiatives that are pro-abortion, pro-abortifacent, and pro-mandated birth control (population control – AKA If you’re being MANDATED to consider a ‘choice’-you’re ‘choice’ has been chosen for you by the mandater-in this case it is obama and obama supporters – and incidentally, those who think this doesn’t affect them and are not speaking out or acting on any of what is going on the news.)
What do you think Jack-did I out-troll you>?? ;-))
I would say there are just as many proLIFE democrats as there are pro-abortion republicans. It’s up to pro-lifers to unite on the issue of life in the next election, and the first step I think, is for pro-life/ catholic/ and conservative values type republicans to be considerate of the prolife democrats when discussing democrats in relation to obama and in general. Don’t believe there is a united front of prolife democrats out there?
See the issues4life.org website and obamanation.com. These people really get what Dr. King Jr. was all about and don’t try to ‘Buffalo Bill’ his voice.
Give me a break. This reminds me of the story of the lady and the snake. The lady acts all surprised when the rattle snake bites her, but the snake tells her, “you knew what I was when you picked me up.”
Planned Parenthood is a rattlesnake. Yes! Glad you agree with me! It is a rattlesnake our ‘health care,’ system is demanding ‘insurers’ to offer to the naive.
Glad you gleaned that from my post.
That’s an old native american story used to warn the youth away from trusting anything they know to be a poison which is soliciting them.
So why would the Obama administration be forcing such a terrible a venomous option to be available to us and our kids?
Could it be he is working for the ‘snake’-aka-PP??
Who is his biggest lobby?