As you may remember, Planned Parenthood recently endorsed Barack Obama for president. Of course Obama is a very busy man at the moment, so he couldn’t personally make the summit (though he did last year) — but he did send along a video message. That was a pretty sweet and energizing way to open things up.
Unfortunately, all things weren’t puppies and sunshine. As you may remember, on Tuesday the 15, while we were all in transit to the summit, the Bush administration apparently began work on a new DHHS rule that would set back reproductive health big time. A quick summary: the rule would force any health provider that receives federal funding — like Planned Parenthood — to not “discriminate” against people who oppose “abortion” in their hiring processes. The reason “abortion” is in quotes is because the rule also redefines abortion a la The Pill Kills campaign, to include hormonal contraception. The brilliance of the attempt is its framing of the rule as an anti-discrimination measure, even though what it would actually do is discriminate against countless women for their audacity to expect basic health care services at locations that are supposed to provide them, and discriminate against anyone who does want to provide those services while receiving federal funding.
Anti-choicers have an inexplicable history of trying to pull radical moves such as these while Planned Parenthood is in town. Last year, it was the Pence Amendment. You’d think that after Planned Parenthood relocated the entire summit to a protest outside of Capitol Hill and the amendment was subsequently defeated, the antis might have learned their lesson. But nah, and Planned Parenthood wasn’t expecting them to. They were, in fact, expecting something similar to the Pence Amendment to come up again, or even worse, a Domestic Gag Rule. No one saw the proposed regulation coming — and it was impressive to see that the people in charge at Planned Parenthood rebounded from the surprise and developed a ready-to-launch strategy within 24 hours. Much of the opening plenary was dedicated to discussing this new issue, and the reason that we can’t let John McCain win this election.
The breakout session I attended this day was called Our Bodies, Our Services, Our Questions, and was basically a refresher course in the science of reproductive health. I’m pretty well-educated in this area, but ended up attending because Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Vanessa Cullins (who does look a lot like her cartoon) was the speaker. I’m a fan of her column and she is a very engaging speaker — people kept throwing all kinds of curve ball questions at her, and she answered them all clearly and intelligently. I also did learn more than I was expecting to, including how exactly medication abortion works, why the concept of fetal pain for all but those fetuses very late in the third trimester is bogus, the truth about those anti-abortion placards, and why it is that despite our very strong hunches, we can’t say for sure that EC and birth control don’t prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg (because there’s no real way to know if a fertilized egg existed but did not implant in cases other than in vitro fertilization).
The lunch briefing was pretty cool. Representative Joseph Crowley was presented with the Voice for Choice Award for being . . . well, a very strong voice for choice! He seemed like a great guy and gave a really good speech. After lunch, we went on lobbying visits, which will warrant its own post. But I wanted to end this post with a story by Walter Dellinger, the Former U.S. Asssistant Attorney General and Solicitor General, and who also spoke at the lunch briefing.
Dellinger was there to talk about executive power and the reason why it is important to have a pro-choice president — a point that was driven home by Obama’s morning video address, McCain’s frightening ignorance/hostility towards birth control, and Bush’s wildly anti-woman plans. Dellinger was in fact called up by Clinton’s people in 1993, with very little notice, and told that Clinton wanted to sign all of the pro-choice executive orders that he was capable of signing shortly after being sworn in, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Dellinger told them that it was too short of a time frame to work within — it couldn’t be done. But within a week, Dellinger did indeed make it happen. He told us about how he was sitting at his computer, staring at the blank screen and asked his wife who is a pro-choice activist where on earth to start. He said that she told him “start with the gag rule.” So he did. He spoke of writing that first sentence and staring at the words, something along the lines of “I William J. Clinton by executive order revoke the so-called ‘gag rule’” . . . and Dellinger, in his last words in his speech to us, said: “And I looked at those words, and I said — and I’ll tell you what I really said — this is what it means to have a fucking pro-choice president.”
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