The Do Nothing Strategy: An Expose of National Progressive Politics

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Those who were intent on silencing the message that Fifty plus One, ACLU and CRLP advocated were only partially successful. They did convince some of their chapters across the country not to participate in message trainings we were offering. They convinced pro-choice U.S. Senators who had invited Fifty plus One to come and share our message with them, to “postpone” the meeting, never to be rescheduled. In Connecticut the local people had been excited to schedule a training which was mysteriously cancelled. When I traveled to California, the Planned Parenthood affiliate there obstructed the training to the extent that I was unable to present my information.

But these national pro-choice groups couldn’t stop the press from writing about the issue. Judy Mann of the Washington Post wrote an article in 1998 on the issue entitled, “Partial Birth Abortion Bans: The Big Lie,” in which she said, “The very clever antiabortion movement has pulled a fast one. Laws passed in 28 states, ostensibly banning “partial-birth abortions” in the last term of pregnancy, are so vaguely worded that they, in effect, could ban abortions throughout pregnancy.” She continued, “Most of the abortion rights movement have been slow to catch on to this. The courts, thankfully, have not."

At the end of the conversation after learning about the realities of this bogus legislation, Judy Mann asked me, “I just have one question for you, where have you been?” I answered by saying simply, “You wouldn’t believe where I’ve been."

Working with the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, with funding from the Ms. Foundation for Women, we were also successful in generating supportive editorials in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, the Boston Globe, the Madison Capital Times and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel among many others. When presented with the legislative language they drew their own conclusions. The New York Times wrote, “The ban’s proponents cloak their strategy by directing attention to a rare medical procedure used in late-term abortions called “intact dilation and extraction.” But the actual language of the law says nothing about that particular procedure, nor does it say anything about late-term abortions. The wording [is] broad enough to cover the most common procedures….”

Time and again we were asked by editors across the nation, where we had been for the preceding two years and why they hadn’t been informed of the reality of this legislation previously by national pro-choice groups. We were battled to a near stand still from within the pro-choice movement. Even today, eight years later, as a so-called “partial birth” abortion ban passed the U.S. House and Senate, most pro-choice groups still have not learned how to accurately portray this issue, but instead prefer to debate the issue on the erroneous, graphic terms offered by anti-choice advocates, as though it proposes to ban a particular type of late-term abortion procedure. The anti-choice minority is actively working to ensure that the long-term consequence is an end to safe and legal abortion.

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