In a Turbulent Time for Planned Parenthood: A Personal Reflection

During the summer of 2015, I volunteered at Planned Parenthood in New York City. One morning, my boss, Caren Spruch, told me the story of how she consulted on the script for “Obvious Child”, a feature film starring “Saturday Night Live’s” Jenny Slate. I remember sitting in her corner office, which was covered in movie posters and contraception ads, listening to Caren explain why she had been enlisted. On the surface, it sounded so glamorous to me: Hollywood and the nonprofit world colliding . In order to ensure that the depiction of Planned Parenthood procedures were accurately portrayed, Caren was given the script to review and fact-check. She talked about that very fine line between not censoring the creative team’s vision while staying true to her organization’s core values. This balance was particularly heightened when dealing with such a sensitive topic as unwanted pregnancy in a comedic film.

At the same time that summer, anti-abortion activists released incendiary videos in an attempt to criminalize Planned Parenthood services. It was such an unbelievable turn of events.  I recall the frustration my coworkers and I felt at how quickly these deceitful videos, made by a group called The Center for Medical Progress, spread across social media like wildfire. Caren called an emergency meeting. In response, our department facilitated the creation of resistance videos showing influencers from around the country offering testimonials about why they support Planned Parenthood and how the organization had supported them in the past.

Before working with Planned Parenthood, the extent of my knowledge around women’s issues did not span much further than the fashion industry. I grew up sitting through fittings with beautiful, thin models at my mother’s design studio in Greenwich Village. I witnessed the detrimental effects of photoshop on the female body to fit the “ideal” body standard. I understood the issue with coining “plus-sized” as any dress size above a 12, when the average dress size for American women is a size 16.  Because I grew up somewhat sheltered, I thought that closing the gender gap was primarily concerned with beauty standards.

When I arrived on my first day at the Planned Parenthood headquarters, I was under the impression that I would be put to work handing out free condoms or helping to organize visits by sex education experts to high schools in the area. In reality, my service in the communications department had greater national implications. Our outreach on social media became an accessible news source for girls around the country searching for answers about the disingenuous pro-life videos. With such a controversial organization, I realized, it is often most vital where it is least popular, especially given the conservative norms in some parts of the country.

Volunteering at Planned Parenthood was a hard reality check for me regarding feminist issues in America. As more and more abortion clinics in the United States close due to an influx in anti-abortion legislation, American women may be forced to resort to dangerous ends to receive reproductive health care. I learned that many pregnant women are now heading to Mexican pharmacies to purchase misoprostol, a drug marketed to prevent ulcers but which can induce abortions if taken at high dosages. Taking a drug like misoprostol without professional supervision can lead to deadly side effects and highlights the urgent need for basic access to birth control and other services. The criticality of feminist studies and reproductive rights became apparent to me as I learned that these issues spanned way further than beauty standards or being cat-called on the street in Manhattan. They were still a question of survival for many American women. In my mind though, the Roe v. Wade debate had already been settled.

As sources of fake media become more institutionalized, I see the job of the storyteller as increasingly vital. I realized that my world was one where meaningful opposition was most often unfriended, unfollowed, or blocked, rather than discussed. My bubble of “truth” had become dangerously marginalized to include only an insulated group of self-congratulators. The stories from women around the country in dire need of reproductive health care drastically changed my understanding of what it means to be an activist. I am reminded of the feminist writer Audre Lorde’s words: I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

Tags: plannedparenthood