MOVING THE MIDDLE
CASE STUDY: RECENT EFFORTS TO
DEFUND PLANNED PARENTHOOD
Activists: The Center for Medical Progress, Operation Rescue, Silent Scream, STOPP Planned Parenthood,
American Life League, The Center for Bioethical Reform, Life Decisions International
Advocates: Students for Life, Susan B. Anthony List, Americans United for Life, National Right to Life, Pro-Life
Action League, Feminists for Life, Live Action, US Conference of Catholic Bishops and various “socially
conservative” organizations
Academics: Bioethics Defense Fund, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Medical
Association, Association of Pro-Life Physicians, American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and
Gynecologists, Catholic Medical Association, Physicians for Life, Pro-Life Healthcare Alliance, Endowment for
Human Development
Antagonists: Planned Parenthood Federation of America, National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action
League, National Organization for Women, National Abortion Federation, National Coalition of Abortion
Providers, Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, Pro-Choice Action Network, Pro-Choice Action
Network, The New Civil Rights Movement, Stop Patriarchy
Mission
End federal funding for Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Strategy
In 2015, the Center for Medical Progress began to release videos of numerous undercover operations
where actors posing as fetal tissue buyers engaged in substantive discussions with PPFA
representatives about providing compensating for the bodies and organs of aborted babies. New and
increasingly disturbing videos, some showing aborted body parts and graphic descriptions of abortion
procedures being altered to harvest more organs, continued to be released on a weekly basis, keeping
the issue in the public eye. Pro-life advocacy organizations leveraged social media to disseminate the
videos to a broad audience when mainstream media outlets refused to cover the story. An aggressive
grassroots effort culminated with public protests at Planned Parenthood facilities across the country, in
state capitals, and in Washington, D.C., and there is heavy pressure on GOP presidential candidates
to vocally oppose abortion and commit to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
Tactics and Positioning
The pro-life movement is a social and political movement that began
in 1973 in the United States, opposing abortion on moral, sectarian,
and scientific grounds. Pro-life advocates generally agree that
human life begins at conception; therefore, the inalienable right to
life for all people cited in the U.S. Declaration of Independence
applies to those people still in the womb. The pro-life movement
includes numerous organizations, with no single centralized
decision-making body, though it is often affiliated with Christian
religious groups and is frequently, though not exclusively, allied with
the Republican Party.
Within the movement, there are varying degrees of opposition to abortion, with some advocating for
complete legal prohibition and others pushing for restricting elective abortion (supporting exceptions for
issues such as life of the mother and pregnancies resulting from rape and/or incest). Due in part to the
Note: Wise Public Affairs was not involved in this campaign. This case study was compiled using publicly available information.
MOVING THE MIDDLE
wide range of goals and strategies, the movement has had difficulty coalescing around a central
message and/or focus.
Recently, pro-life groups have focused on calling attention to the legal and ethical failings of the largest
abortion provider in the U.S., Planned Parenthood Federation of America, with the goal of restricting
access to abortion and doing away with the nearly $500 million per year in federal funding PPFA
receives. They have used a variety of tactics to accomplish this goal, including legislative advocacy
and highlighting advances in research on fetal development.
Activists, utilizing a wide range of tactics to bring attention
to the issue through media reports, the releasing of
undercover videos, and public rallies, have helped the
broader pro-life movement gain traction on calls to strip
PPFA of their federal funding. In response to the release of
undercover videos by CMP, aggressive grassroots efforts
have included public protests at Planned Parenthood
facilities across the country, at state capitals, and in
Washington, D.C. On August 22, 2015, pro-life activists gathered at Planned Parenthood facilities
across America in a “pro-life national day of protests”.
Media reports suggest that the CMP videos had been in the works for 30 months, and are being
released weeks apart in order to keep the dialogue relevant and active, to ensure that Planned
Parenthood/abortion is a topic in the 2016 presidential race. The CMP’s release of undercover videos
provided established pro-life Advocates and Academics with new leverage, and a unique opportunity to
use the disgust felt by the public at the prospect of Planned Parenthood dismembering and selling
baby’s body parts to lobby for an end to federal funding for PPFA.
Advocates have primarily focused on disseminating the video evidence against PPFA, and leveraged
the attention to secure meetings with legislators and political figures, leading to legislation introduced in
2015 to defund Planned Parenthood. Work by Advocates to defund PPFA has led to Congress sending
several letters to PPFA and other tissue procurement organizations requesting answers to many of the
questions raised by the videos. Republican Leadership in the House and Senate have agreed to use
all investigative tools available to come to a conclusion about the legality of PPFA’s activities.
Meanwhile, Academics on both sides took to the airwaves and wrote opinion pieces discussing the
bioethics of abortion and using aborted fetal body parts for medical research.
Antagonists were caught off guard when the CMP videos were released, and stumbled to defend
themselves. At the time of the first video’s release, there was no counter-strategy at the grassroots
level, though some extreme pro-choice activist groups (including organizations such as the Stop
Patriarchy movement and the Satanic Temple) did show up to the pro-life events to stage counterdemonstrations. Because of the strategy employed by the CMP to release the videos one at a time,
PPFA has had to continue defending their actions while each new video brings more negative attention
to the their activities.
Only after the release of the fourth video did Antagonists coalesce around a public campaign to
support Planned Parenthood and defend the “access to women’s health” that they provide. Many
Antagonists began rallying around PPFA and painting them as the victim of unfair and misleading
attacks, which their allies in the media and political figures helped echo. PPFA even went so far as to
hire a Democratic opposition research firm to produce an “independent report” on the validity of the
videos, which it then disseminated to the press, claiming it showed the videos were edited and
misleading.
Outcome
This campaign is still in progress.
Note: Wise Public Affairs was not involved in this campaign. This case study was compiled using publicly available information.