Planned Parenthood Under Attack

  Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) is the nation's leading sexual and reproductive health care provider and advocate (plannedparenthood.org). It is a branch of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and one of its largest members.

   Contraception accounts for 35 percent of PPFA's total services and abortions account for 3 percent. PPFA conducts roughly 300,000 abortions each year, among 3 million people served. The Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Inc., (PPAF) is a related organization, which lobbies for pro-choice legislation, comprehensive sex education, and access to affordable health care in the United States.

   Planned Parenthood has its roots in Brooklyn, New York, where Margaret Sanger opened the country's first birth-control clinic. Sanger founded the American Birth Control League in 1921, which in 1942, became part of the Planned Federation of America. Since that time, Planned Parenthood has grown and now has over 820 clinic locations in the United States, with a total budget of US $1 billion.

In the Line of Fire
  
   Although Planned Parenthood provides many basic health care services to millions of women in need, 

 Monique Benoit tells her story

it frequently falls under attack for a variety of reasons and is largely seen as an abortion mill by members of the Christian Right.

 

(Gary Stelzer - Associated Press)

    Most recently, the withdrawal of funds for mammogram screening by the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation announced on January 31st raised a huge controversy about Planned Parenthood's mission and stirred the dust on always contentious issues, which played out loud and clear in social media.

(Jan. 25 - Mar. 25)

Posts per day = 44.40            Average % = 0.0097             Total posts = 2,664

_______________________________

(Jan. 15 - Mar. 14)

Posts per day = 114.28            Average % = 0.0241             Total posts = 6,857

    An announcement about Komen's action on Planned Parenthood's Facebook page that same day generated 1,248 comments.

     On February 2, more social media buzz was generated when NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg offered to match every gift made to Planned Parenthood up to $250K in an effort to replace funds that had been expected from the Komen Foundation. All of this is evident in the pronounced spike in blog activity in the Ice Rocket graph above.

     This event was followed by the flap raised by Rush Limbaugh on February 29th over Sandra Fluke's testimony before a congressional committee about women's need for access to birth control for reasons other than the prevention of pregnancy, such as the treatment of ovarian cysts, endometriosis, and other general health issues. For her efforts to represent the rights of women, Limbaugh labeled her a "slut" and Planned Parenthood was once again indirectly under fire.

    A tremendous amount of passion has been generated over these issues. Supporters of Planned Parenthood posted links for their "Planned Parenthood Saved My Life" blogs on the organization's Facebook page, whereas supporters of the Komen Foundation talked more about the sacredness of unborn life, often quoting Bible chapter and verse. Almost all posts were in one camp or the other. New York Times columnist Gail Collins noticed this as well, writing:

"This week we had a huge political fight about

breast cancer. Clearly, we have now hit the point where there’s nothing that can’t be divided into red-state-blue-state."

-- The Politics of Absolutely Everything  

    Interestingly, however, this distinction does not seem to manifest itself in the statistics in socialmention with regard to Planned Parenthood on the "Sentiment" dimension. No matter when I've looked at these metrics, "sentiment" has always been overwhelmingly neutral. Surprisingly, the same has been true of the Komen Foundation.

    Below are the stats from socialmention for the last day (Tues., 3/13/12), last week (from Wed., 3/07/12 - Tues., 3/13/12), and last month (2/13/12 - 3/14/12).



The Effects of the Groundswell. . .

 

A rally in support of Planned Parenthood on the National Mall in Washington, April 7, 2011.

"I've never seen anything

catch fire like this."

-- Cecile Richards, CEO, Planned Parenthood

   Within three days of the announcement by the Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure that it was going to withdraw funding for breast cancer screenings from Planned Parenthood, because the latter organization was under investigation by Congress for illegal use of government monies to provide abortions, Planned Parenthood raised nearly $3 million from more than 10,000 donors over three days. These donations are at least six times the amount that the Komen Foundation gave to Planned Parenthood last year. Planned Parenthood's CEO, Cecile Richards, stated that her group would use the donations exclusively to maintain and build the organization's breast-examination centers.

  By contrast, two more top executives have resigned from the Komen Foundation and that organization has postponed its annual fundraising gala because executives "were not certain about our ability to fundraise in the near term," spokesperson Vern Calhoun said in a statement. In addition, a number of Komen affiliates are reporting lower than usual revenues, including the Baton Rouge, La., Greater Fort Worth, Texas, and Southern Arizona chapters, and participation in Race For The Cure, Komen's signature fundraising event, is down.

   Meanwhile, on March 12, Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan, and Gloria Steinem, co-founders of the Women's Media Center, castigated Rush Limbaugh for his "racist, sexist, homophobic remarks," most recently regarding Sandra Fluke, and urged the FCC to remove him from the air for his "hate speech." Pro-choice Democratic women in Congress like Gwendolyn Moore and Jackie Speier, along with thousands of progressive activists, added their voices to this protest and urged his advertisers to cancel their ads. On March 21, I received an email from Democrats.com announcing that

"140 key advertisers have now cancelled"

and that "without ad revenues, local stations are cancelling his show altogether."

The Fight Against Komen

   When it came to defending itself against the withdrawal of funds for breast cancer screenings that Susan G. Komen for the Cure had initiated, Planned Parenthood wasted no time in creating a groundswell of its own. This is somewhat antithetical to what we normally think of as a groundswell, which is a spontaneous uprising of the people in response to a social injustice or other major issue. In this case, Planned Parenthood cleverly harnessed the power of social media to make it look as though a groundswell was happening, when, in fact, its inception was orchestrated from the top.

The Timeline

• Mid-December 2011-- Planned Parenthood CEO, Cecile Richards, receives a call from Susan G. Komen for the Cure saying that it is withdrawing its funding for breast cancer screenings, because Planned Parenthood is under investigation by Congress for misappropriation of funds.

-- Richards tries to set up a meeting with the Komen Board, but is rebuffed.

-- Planned Parenthood quietly declares war and takes six weeks to put together a counter offensive, beginning with an "exclusive" to the Associated Press, which is published on

• January 31, 2012 -- Planned Parenthood's online and social media team was standing by when the story broke.

-- They immediately blasted news releases via email and Twitter and posted the information on Planned Parenthood's Facebook wall.

-- More than 2,000 supporters shared that post with their own friends on the social network.

-- On Twitter, Planned Parenthood wrote:

"ALERT: Susan G. Komen caves under

anti-choice pressure, ends funding for breast cancer screenings at PP health centers."

-- More than 500 Twitter users reposted that message.

-- Planned Parenthood added more than 32,000 fans to its Facebook page that day.


In response to the Komen decision, Planned Parenthood had a simple strategy for Facebook and Twitter:

"We gave people things to do,"



such as suggesting they donate, sign an online petition, Tweet about the issue, and post a Planned Parenthood badge on Facebook.

"All of it is meant to reinforce the idea of showing public support."


Komen, by contrast, was completely unprepared when the story broke.

Komen leaders were slow to react, and their initial responses were brief, formal, and defensive. Public Relations Rogue comments:

 the battle was lost in those initial 24 hours,

when Planned Parenthood mobilized

its fans and led a smart, vocal

PR counter-offensive.

*  *  *

The failure of the Komen team to acknowledge,

and adequately respond to, the uproar

on social networks is seen by many

as the biggest failure

in their crisis management strategy.

This finding was confirmed by Yahoo! researchers, who noted:

Sorting through over 100,000 tweets

that were sent in regard to Komen

during the controversy, we see

that they are dominated by critics

of the move. 

POLITICO.com noted that:

Twitter users sent more than 1.3 million Tweets

referencing Planned Parenthood,

the Susan G. Komen Foundation

and related terms and hastags . . .

Planned Parenthood helped spur the conversation by using a "promoted tweet,"

Twitter's equivalent of advertising.

In the final analysis, Komen was no match for Planned Parenthood.



They were just incredibly naive
in the face of

[the] incredibly sophisticated

Planned Parenthood operation.

The Audience Planned Parenthood Needs to Target

   In an analysis of Tweets, blog posts, and comments on Facebook, it's clear that Planned Parenthood draws either passionately committed supporters, as personified by Monique Benoit above, or the deepest ire, as expressed in the Tweet below:


RT @chainsawabortion: I nicknamed my closet

"Planned Parenthood" because, you know,

the hangers.

-- From Twitter Search on addictomatic.com -- 2/27/12

  
    There is really no in between and I believe this constitutes Planned Parenthood's greatest public relations challenge. People are certainly entitled to their opinions and religious beliefs, but they should at least have accurate facts about the organization. To many people, primarily women, Planned Parenthood is just an abortion mill that is totally antithetical to their moral and religious values. And whereas Planned Parenthood is the largest single provider of abortions in America, it is also the nation's largest provider of family planning and birth control that makes those abortions avoidable.

   Furthermore, Planned Parenthood does not provide abortion services because it is a "promoter" of abortion, but rather because it believes that "everyone has the right to choose when or whether to have a child, and that every child should be wanted and loved."   

   There is a tremendous amount of misinformation out there about Planned Parenthood, coming from seemingly reputable sources. Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican Whip, was forced to retract a false assertion he made on the floor of the Senate that abortion accounts for "well over 90 percent" of Planned Parenthood's work. (The correct figure is three percent.) In a statement to CNN, Sen. Kyl's office claimed that "his remark was not intended to be a factual statement."

   What women need to hear is that each year, Planned Parenthood provides nearly one million screenings for cervical cancer and 830,000 breast exams. It also provides affordable birth control to nearly 2.5 million patients and nearly four million tests and treatments for sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. 

For over 30 years

not a dollar of federal funding 

that Planned Parenthood has received

to provide preventive and basic health care

has paid for abortion.

-- Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America

   Although most of Planned Parenthood's opponents have pretty well made up their minds, it's important to try to reach them with accurate information, and hopefully real-life stories of people they can relate to, that will show them the important social and medical needs Planned Parenthood fills for a wide swath of our population, many of whom are underserved.

Conclusion

    Richards is delighted with the results of the latest controversy, because it not only benefited Planned Parenthood financially, but raised awareness of its mission. She claims, "We heard from tens of thousands of people.

"It was a fabulous opportunity

to frankly educate a lot of people in America about the preventive care we do."



Can We Surmount Obstacles to Internal Communication through Social Media?

In almost every organization I've ever worked, internal communication has been a slippery slope. Twenty years ago, forward-looking CEOs tried to open the channels by creating employee newsletters and holding focus groups to obtain feedback, but each of these initiatives had its drawbacks. The communication in employee newsletters was often "top-down" and employees rarely cared to air their true opinions in manager-led focus groups, fearing reprisals if their opinions were not politically correct.

    Consequently, it gives me great joy to see social media make its way into the workplace as a tool for informing, obtaining feedback, generating discussion, and creating solutions.

SME-TV: Behind the Scenes with Best Buy

Blue Shirt Nation

It is far more nimble than any print publication, which is usually long in the making, and allows for immediate two-way communication. As we have seen in Groundswell,

  it also has the same revolutionary potential to alter the path of bureaucracies that was demonstrated in the Arab Spring, but in ways closer to home, such as Best Buy's Blue Shirt Nation rolling back corporate's proposed cut in the employee discount (p. 218).

   In her excellent article, "They're just not that into you: Can social media revitalize employee communication?", CEO Alison Davis comments: "Social media has the potential to engage employees like never before, transforming their role from passive, indifferent spectators to active participants." This is something we are beginning to see more and more, as corporate leaders realize that they need to risk putting power in the hands of their workers, if they want their companies to grow and thrive (Li and Bernoff, 2008, p. 216).

Email is so last century.

Is it time to try out new web tools

for internal communication?

Burton Goldfield "How Social Networks Can Boost Productivity"

    The unexpected benefits of using social media often show themselves through increased productivity. Web 2.0 tools -- such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, company blogs, and internal networks, like Microsoft Communicator and Central Desktop -- can help business owners align corporate goals, drive employee engagement and streamline operations. In his Feb. 2011 article in entrepreneur.com, author Burton Goldfield points out: "The goal of internal social environments is to create a collaboration-focused community where teams stop working in silos." Internal networks give all parties working on a project instant visibility into each of its components. Setbacks can be instantly communicated and redundancies, as well as "rogue projects" not in sync with the objectives of the business, can be eliminated.

    Goldfield comments that internal social networks are increasingly being used as a strategy to empower employees to be creative and give them a voice in the direction of the company. One of the ways this can be done is through creating a discussion board on the Intranet to encourage staff to provide ideas on new products, programs, or ways to improve work processes. Soliciting this type of feedback, and offering opportunities for participation, lead to greater employee engagement, satisfaction and motivation, which ultimately result in higher levels of productivity, revenue and profit. In conclusion, Goldfield tells us: "Investing the time and resources to roll out an internal social network has the potential to deliver benefits to all corners of an organization's business and operations."