Liveblog: Pro-Choice Messaging for a New Era

With that introduction, we can start. We’ve already received some reader questions which we will get to shortly! My first question to start things off is for Sarah.

I want to start out by extending my empathy, sympathy, and courage to Sarah after the violent attack on her clinic this morning.

Thank you, I appreciate it, Gloria. As a veteran leader of our movement you know all too well what these experiences feel like.

Thanks, Gloria. As we all do, absolutely. Are you all safe and is the clinic okay?

Fortunately no one was hurt, and services were uninterrupted, but it does underscore how much work we have to do in our community and nationwide.

(For readers wanting to know more about the attack on Sarah’s Planned Parenthood clinic in Minnesota, click here.)

Absolutely, Sarah. You all have done a lot of great work. Can you talk a bit about why you think the South Dakota campaign’s messages and stories used to challenge Measure 11, the abortion ban that was defeated in November,   resonated with South Dakotans? In other words, as Kay wrote in her article on RH Reality Check about the defeat, how does a state in which most voters would probably still identify as pro-life manage to defeat abortion bans twice?

And for our readers, once again, thank you for your questions and we will get to them in the order we receive them or as they are relevant. Thank you so much!

You’re right, Amie. Most voters in SD, by a sizeable margin, do still self-identify as “pro-life”; however, people are capable of complex moral reasoning, and what I’ve learned is that treating people with respect, especially when we are in disagreement, is essential to establishing mutual trust and conversation.

So, when we listen to the voters and understood their concerns, and approached them with open mindedness and respect, they were willing to do the same for us.

It’s more than a messaging strategy, it’s a political strategy that involves allowing people to be morally conflicted about abortion, while at the same time asking them to keep abortion legal.

More than anything, I think, voters respond to authenticity and moral clarity.

Do you think the pro-choice movement is afraid of keeping this idea of being morally conflicted about abortion as part of our strategy – whether political or messaging wise?

And as an extension to that question: What kind of moral reasoning did you see? How were voters able to explain their positions to themselves? “I oppose abortion morally, but … “

I think that when people are under seige for so long, there is a tendency to close ranks as self protection. But in truth, the moral breadth of our position is what is so powerful and what ultimately wins almost every ballot initiative we have fought.

I wouldn’t say afraid. I would say inexperienced with this idea. It’s hard for all of us to let go of tried and true language that we’ve relied on for many years. But in point of fact, our refusal to acknowledge genuine moral ambiguity is not helpful and does not move the conversation forward.

Marcy Bloom asks, then, Hi, Sarah and Gloria. When you discuss moral clarity and conflict. ho you believe it is successful and “appealing “to use the concept of women as moral and ethical decision-makers? Does that resonate?

I want to clarify something–appreciating moral ambiguity does not mean moral relativity, or that we don’t have moral values/beliefs.

Marcy, yes, emphatically.The secret of the anti-choice efforts’ success has always been rooted in their moral clarity. That gives them a simple and authentic argument. We have that ability too. We shouldn’t be flippant (eg, phrases like rosaries off our ovaries, Bush stay out of mine, etc). But elevate the debate to a higher moral plane of women’s human rights, justice, moral agency. Then justify that position with stories, illustrations of healthy happy families, drawing the bigger map about childbearing choices that includes birth control, prevention, health, etc.

Good question, Marcy. I would say that is not an argument we would take to the voters of SD if we want to win these ballot campaigns.

Gloria, I think those are fine arguments in certain parts of the country but they do not work in places like South Dakota, and that is unfortunately where these battles are being fought.

Thanks Sarah.   Ok, next question comes from Deborah Kotz of US News and World Report…   Is there any way you see (in terms of the messages you send) that can unite most Americans when it comes to abortions? The vast majority favor a woman’s right to choose but also believe there should be some restrictions on abortions. I’m not sure how many will be in favor of using their taxpayer funds to pay for abortions–which would occur if the Freedom of Choice Act passes. Do you have any message to unite yourselves with those in favor of choice but personally against abortions or using their tax dollars to pay for them?

Sarah, I would agree with you in part and disagree in part. fighting ballot initiatives is a very particular skill. But I would suggest that even in those localized situations, our responsibility as movement leaders is to start where people are and move them to where we want them to be. Ballot initiaves can be a great teaching tool.

I just want to give my red state bona fides to those who don’t know.We’ve always had an axiom in the movement that everybody thinks she lives in the most conservative state. Certainly SD would be a contender. So would Arizona and Texas, the two places where I led PP affiliates for 22 years. I understand red states better than blue ones, to be honest. In AZ in 1992, we defeated a ballot initiative to ourlaw abortion except for rape and incest by 67% to 33%, the highest margin of any initiative to tha date.

I lived almost all my life in the most conservative areas first of Texas and then of Arizona. So I do understand how hard it is to be in that crucible.

Yes, Gloria. And while Colorado was blue this time around it certainly hasn’t always been and the personhood amendment there went up in flames this year. Sarah, as Gloria says, how can we meet certain people where they are at but also teach and work towards change. We dont’ want to tell someone they are flat out wrong but that discrimination is wrong, that ownerhip of womens’ bodies is wrong. In other words – the person’s opinion isn’t wrong but the underlying issues. Anna Clark asks: How can pro-choice activists support each other in recognizing that moral complexity of the public–rather than letting ourselves be defined as the simple “opposite” of those opposed to legal abortion?

Readers and participants – your questions are fantastic and we hope to be able to get to as many as possible! Thank you!

To me, the egg debate in CO has a huge silver lining. After decades of defending Roe, the women’s movement must address the question it has long avoided: the value of a woman and her life. Roe was a meaningful and necessary advance, but its grounding in privacy rights portended that it could not stand forever. So though it feels scary in a way, it is a great time to set a bold new agenda based on justice and human rights and secure the policies and social support that make rights meaningful. Maybe Marcy can comment on how they get the human rights basis in Mexico…we should really watch how things continue to unfold there.

To get back to Deborah’s question – what we did in SD can be done elsewhere. We started by respecting people who see the world differently than we do and listened to their concerns. We didn’t ask them to abandon their moral opposition to abortion. We just asked them to keep it legal.

Thank you, Sarah. We have another question for you. Also, we’d love to get Marcy’s vision in response to Gloria’s question. Marcy Bloom is a consultant with GIRE, a reproductive rights advocacy organization working in Mexico for abortion rights.

For Sarah: Hi Sarah. I was in the Rapid City office volunteering with Healthy Families during IM 11, and had a question about the messaging that I was told to use on my canvassing trips. We were told explicitly not to focus on women or choice; why do you think that was necessary for a victory in South Dakota? Also, there was talk of a hidden pro-choice movement that I, personally, didn’t see much evidence of. Can you expand on that idea at all?

Deborah, thanks for that excellent question that goes right into the political realities. To answer it, I need to separate out what I think a movement should do to keep advancing toward full justice for women and the realities of moving a piece of legislation forward. We have to go on two tracks.

If we had used pro-choice rhetoric in South Dakota, we would have lost. No question about it.

The FOCA can be a teacher. It can provide the platform for us to talk about why abortion coverage is fair and just–two more great American values. Note i said “coverage”, not funding, because that is accurate.

To further answer your question, there is not a hidden pro-choice movement in SD. There is a movement to keep government out of personal decision making, and that means no abortion bans.

Thank you, Gloria. When the Mexican Supreme Court ruled in August that abortion is a constitutional right, they emphasized the critical aspects of women’s human rights, equality, discrimination, and unique health needs of women that were key to their lives and survival..so different from the limitations of Roe’s privacy right.

But FOCA as it is curently written is so much more. It is a human rights-based civil rights bill that says teh government can’t discrimimate against you if you decide to have or not have a child. Two sides of the same coin. That’s what reproductive justice is. So having an agenda that gives us the opportunity to talk about these issues even if the bill doesn’t pass in the near future is valuable.

Sarah, how do you define “pro-choice rhetoric?” I want to understand better what you are referring to.

We didn’t use the words “pro-choice” in any of our campaigning because to “pro-life” voters in SD, choice is not the point. And it’s the “pro-life” voters that we needed to convince.

Gloria, the way the anti-choice leaders are framing FOCA though, is by saying that it is the most “pro-abortion” legislation to ever be introduced. They have seized on FOCA as an all powerful piece of legislation and it’s hard then to go back and frame it, on our side, as something that isn’t that. Is part of our challenge the pro-activity with which we approach legislative and other fights?

Oh, thanks for that clarification, sarah. Re choice, it remains a positive value for the public but as currently understood it would never trump life. It seems hard to remove it from the lexicon—I tried and failed—good luck if you can do it—it seems to be a handy code word for a larger philosophy of less government intrusion, and people take it to include birth control, abortion, and other childbearing issues. I think the word could be rebranded to be what it is—the basis of all morality. But that would be enormously expensive and a very difficult leadership heave for whoever has to make it happen.

You’re right, Gloria, and fortunately we don’t have to make it happen. We can move on.

Kristen Sherk asks… Hi, Sarah and Gloria – You raise the important point that one message can’t work for every audience. But as a movement, how do we embrace both those who are morally ambivalent about abortion without invalidating the experiences of women who have chosen to have abortions?

And as a related comment: Judith Steinhart says, The issue of abortion is so emotionally charged. I don’t think anyone likes it, which is why prevention is so important, but to be able to have the option is critical, for a woman to be able to make a choice and to have qualiity healthcare rather than take it upon herself

Brady, of course we knew that’s how they would try to frame it. All the more reason why we need to keep saying what it is, educating people, and at all times using language that reflects the highest moral principles.

Thanks Brady. Why can’t we just say “you have a right to your moral ambivalence, and we understand and respect it.”? At the same time, government should not be the decision making agent for women.

Hi Kirsten. ah yes, the great conundrum. A college student in the course I am teaching came to me after class yesterday and expressed her dismay that we always talk about women’s stories when they were victims, but never about women who simply make what they think are responsible decision about their own lives and aspirations for themselves and their future children. This troubles me, as it troubles her. she said it made her feel very bad…I don’t know her personal story, but I can imagine.

Sarah, but let’s add to that formulation: I feel equally strongly about my moral position and I ask you to respect me in the same way I respect you.

In fact, Gloria, that’s what we did. And the voters of SD, twice in two election years, did respect us.

We don’t serve ourselves so well when we just acknowledge the other side’s right to their moral view and balance it with moral relativity. I suggest that our message is stronger when we start from our own moral clarity and acknowledge that many people are ambivalent, hold differing positions, etc. and in a pluralistic society, we need to respect that.

Sarah and Gloria – there are more and more publications and groups that are doing that – presenting the moral ambiguity, the varying experiences of women and I think it is critical that we recognize and validate all womens’ experiences. But, unfortunately, there cannot be ambiguity when it comes to public policy. As an example, the HHS regulations. We simply cannot allow some to use their own moral code as a way to prevent others from receiving and accessing services. This is where they ambiguity gest difficult, no?

I’m sorry about my typos!

Amie, thank you for your typos. they make me feel less dorky.

That’s what I’m here for!

And, relatedly from a reader:   It seems that the pro-choice movement is also critically concerned, though, with “outing” anti-choicers as anti-contraception, too — in other words, they’re opposed to women’s reproductive and sexual freedom, and their moral hesitation around abortion is a convenient smokescreen. Sarah, is that an entirely distancing and disrespectful way to cast their position?

No it’s not difficult, because people who have moral ambiguity about birth control should not work in a clinic, and we should be able to hire people in our clinics who support our mission. We’re not asking all voters to work in our clinics, we’re just asking them to allow us to provide health care to women.

To respond to the reader’s question, the leadership of the anti-abortion rights movement/anti-contraception movement are not reflective of the mainstream voters in SD who have defeated abortion bans. There’s a clear disconnect between the leadership’s agenda and the voters on the ground.

To go back to Roe on this 36th anniversary, it is both the solution to and the cause of some of our problems, especially the one Amie raises. This is just a tad radical, but I propose (as Justice Ginsburg has always said) we now must shift the legal framework from one based on privacy to one based on equal protection such as FOCA. The language of the debate must be elevated accordingly, and advocates must create a steady stream of policy initiatives to protect and expand reproductive rights, health care access, and justice. No time to rest after the great celebration Tuesday!

I couldn’t agree more with Sarah re the contraception issue. I delineated the connection clearly in The War on Choice.

Sarah, excellent point and one with which I agree. Unfortunately, though they are not representative of most voters they wield enormous power. And so, as Gloria wrote, is now the time to be as pro-active as possible in both our messaging and political strategy? Julia, a reader, writes:   I find it’s often difficult to attract people’s attention to reproductive justice issues because financial, housing, food security, etc. concerns are more immediate in people’s day-to-day lives. How do we get the general public to understand that legal abortion and, more generally, reproductive justice are core human rights issues that affect everyone? What kind of messaging can we employ to capture people’s attention?

That said, there are many pro-birth control, anti-choice people with whom we can work very effectively–and should.

To Julia’s Q: I am jazzed that the U.S. Senate is today debating the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay act. economic and reproductive justice, as many women of color especially have beeen telling us for years, are inextricably linked. That’s why the words “barefoot and pregnant” have always resonated.

Oops, to complete my thought to Julia, I am jazzed that Ledbetter is being debated on Roe Day.

Amie, it depends on what you mean by being proactive. I certainly think that now is the time to push as hard as possible to ensure universal access to birth control and inclusion of abortion in the health care reform debates that are raging across the country in state capitals and in Washington. I think that our electoral victories have demonstrated to politicians that they need not be afraid of the abortion issue and that they need not turn away from it. In the past abortion has been used as a wedge issue to divide the progressive coalition and we’ve now demonstrated in South Dakota that abortion can be a unifying issue.

Sarah – how did younger voters differ from older voters in SD on Measure 11? And Gloria and Sarah, are these messages resonating with younger people? Mia, a reader asks, How can those of us interested in the protection of reproductive rights best appeal to the younger generations to care about this issue as well?

Amie, to answer your queston about geting the public’s attention, Religion Dispatches had an excellent piece today about the importance of the relitious vioces. Especially note Carleton Veazey’s words, prophetic a always.

Post-election polling tells us that our messages resonated equally with all demographic groups including church goers and non church goers, young and old.

Gloria, In your article, in the December 10th issue of Democracy Journal, you write about the history of Roe and the problems with arguing for choice as a “right to privacy” issue. Of the legal battles that have ensured choice, you wrote, “these very victories carried within them the seeds of their own demise, for they were not grounded in women’s moral and legal agency.” Can you tell us more about what you mean by this?

To take an example from recent political events: I suggest that Obama’s messaging beat Clinton’s because it elevated people’s moral vision and made them feel good about themselves. It wasn’t carefully parsed to diferent constituencies. It was or at least seemed to be authentic, not to shy away from controversy, and to appeal to people’s higher selves rather than their fears.

i really hope someone’s writing a book about how the SD abortion bans were faught, i’d love to know more about it

One final point is that for too long the reproductive rights movement shied away from electoral battles, and this was at the expense of building a movement. Litigation doesn’t build movements. Actively engaging ordinary people in debates about important issues does. The most important achievement in SD is that we now have a movement where one did not exist prior to 2006. With this movement we have defeated two bans and we can defeat more if we need to.

BRady, Shameless self promotion here: https://gloriafeldt.com.previewdns.com/heartfeldt-politics-blog/2008/12/9/beyond-roe-toward-human-rights-for-women.html , in case anyone wants to read the article– I reviewed legal history and interviewed Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Nine and legal expert for xx. Seems that in 1965 when the Supremes took Griswold v Connecticut (which legalized birth control), they had no gender-based civil rights precedents on which to base their ruling. So they used the precedent that there is an unwritten but implied right of privacy in the Constitution. (more in next post)

That right of privacy then logically formed the basis of the Roe v Wade decision. The 14th amendment, equal protection, was given a nod but it wasn’t the central rationale. Justice Ginsburg, as I noted previously, has long said that in her view this was a big mistake for women’s reproductive rights, and she has been proven correct. Roe has been subjected to successful attacks since it was decided. At this point it is a mere shell. Any restriction that doesn’t cause an “undue burden” is upheld by the court which finds almost no burdens undue. So in Beyond Roe, I say we have to start over, create a new movement for women’s human and civil rights to make their own childbearing decisions. That’s my challenge to the next generation.

Thank you Gloria and Sarah! Extremely inspiring words from both of you. Sarah, you have built a strong and powerful movement in SD clearly built on an allied vision and one that it seems is mirrored, somewhat, in teh common ground movement PResident Obama is also trying to build. Gloria, the challenge now is certainly to work wtih a younger generation on these issues while making sure they know and understand the history.

I guess I would disagree with Sarah on her last point about a movement not existing until 2006+. I’m an activist in SD and myself and many others think that these bans and the way they were handled actually hurt our already-existent movement.

Sarah, you are so right. Litigation strategy is helpful in many ways, but especially now when the courts are owned lock, stock, and barrel by the right, litigation has limited value. The next wave is person by person, vote by vote, state by state.

Could we hear more from Mandy?

Thanks Gloria. It’s great to hear your voice through your words. Keep up the good work.

So my parting shot to the younger folks in our movement is to keep true to your convictions and never stop fighting forward proactively. At the core of opposition to abortion and birth control is opposition to women’s independent moral agency. It’s our responsibility to move people toward greater support for women’s equality and justice. . That’s not easy. I know the temptation to narrow the argument is strong. But then if it were easy, they would have sent less capable people to do the job, right? JFK said about going to the moon,”We do this not because it’s easy but because it is hard.’

Thank you, Gloria. Sarah do you have any parting thoughts? Thank you to Sarah and Gloria for their excellent work on behalf of the reproductive rights movement, for agreeing to spend part of the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade with us – at this moment in history. We clearly disagree in some ways on messaging and strategy but we all have a larger vision for a world in which women’s lives are respected and our status elevated. I hope we can continue the debate and discussion, respectfully and productively!

And thanks Sarah for your kind words but more so for your leadership. It is truly a pleasure to share this conversation with you.

The important lesson is that we should never shy away from an attempt to have a debate about abortion before the electorate, even in conservative parts of the country. Abortion may be morally uncomfortable for some people, but very few want to ban it. We should embrace debate about abortion with our neighbors wherever we live, and never, ever be afraid to talk about it publically, as long as we are willing to listen to those who disagree with us.

And thank you to our readers and all who submitted questions and participated in the discussion. We are still working through the technology for these live-blog chats monthly. If you have questions, comments, complaints, suggestions, feel free to email us at editor@rhrealitycheck.org. We do want to hear from you! Gloria and Sarah, stay safe and thank you again for sharing your time and expertise with all of us!

Thanks to all who participated. Onward.

Thanks so much.