Jon O’Brien Interview from Family Planning Health Services on Vimeo.

Richard Doerflinger, speaking for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, responded to a Wall Street Journal article about Wisconsin’s Medicaid Family Planning expansion saying: “It reflects a view of women which is extremely dismissive . . .” Mr. Doerflinger goes on to recommend that the expansion be rejected because family planning advocates are only interested in a woman’s reproductive function and making sure it isn’t used.

Family Planning Health Services, Inc. and the Wisconsin Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association are very proud to release this engaging video interview with Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice. Mr. O’Brien explores themes of political power and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. He establishes a clear three-question structure within which legislators and the public can evaluate lobbying efforts and policy recommendations like Mr. Doerflinger’s:

1. Is it factually correct?
2. Who does the speaker represent?
3. What are the consequences to ordinary working people?

Mr. O’Brien says that good Catholics can support contraception. He describes the history of the Vatican’s Birth Control Commission which was: “far less than divine inspiration. It was a matter of stacking the deck!” Even though the outcome was pre-determined to oppose use of the birth control pill, according to O’Brien, education and dialogue . . . “changed the hearts and minds of the bishops” on the Commission. “Can you imagine how many lives could have been saved,” O’Brien asks, “if the Pope had enough faith in Catholics to accept the Commission’s recommendations?”

Mr. O’Brien’s emphasis throughout the interview is that the bishops and legislators must “Listen to the lives of ordinary Catholics. He says: “We are the ones who go to the ballot box.”  On reproductive health issues, according to O’Brien, “The bishops have failed to convince Catholics not to use contraception. So what do they do? They go off to Capitol Hill or to your state assembly and behind the doors they try to pressure legislators into not allowing access to family planning.” With no equivocation he says: “There’s something that’s downright wrong and un-American about that!

O’Brien states that the information that the hierarchy gives on contraception and condoms is inaccurate and that the bishops do not speak for Catholic voters. But to make his most important point on testing the validity of lobbying by the bishops against family planning, Mr. O’Brien praises the courage and example of Bishop Kevin Dowling from South Africa. Paraphrasing Bishop Dowling, who has differed with Church teachings on the use of condoms to prevent HIV/Aids, O’Brien says:  “Using condoms to prevent AIDs is not about preventing the transmission of life. It is about preventing the transmission of death.

If we apply the test to Mr. Doerflinger’s statement regarding Medicaid family planning, it is factually incorrect, it represents the view of some (but not all) of the 350 U.S. Catholic Bishops, and the consequence would be to reduce access to health care for thousands of American women.

Part 1 – James Wagoner from Family Planning Health Services on Vimeo.

After James Wagoner’s call for a ‘radical pragmatism’ to end the myth that sexual health care and education encourage risky behavior, we spoke with Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-WI).

Part 2 – Gwenn Moore from Family Planning Health Services on Vimeo.

Congresswoman Gwen Moore explains that the consequences of ignorance about sexual health are too severe to permit ideological debate. Our next interview with Sarah Audelo of Advocates for Youth, says the age of sexual misinformation must end.

Part 3 – Sarah Audelo from Family Planning Health Services on Vimeo.

Sarah Audelo, of Advocates for Youth, says the high rates of sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancies among our young people compel us to teach them how to protect themselves. Our next interview, with Clare Coleman of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association discusses that there are economic as well as health reasons to expand access to care.

Part 4 – Clare Coleman from Family Planning Health Services on Vimeo.

Clare Coleman discussed patient care, standards of reproductive health care, and evolving health care delivery models. If the question is: “How can family planning clinics and programs put the pieces together in a patient-centered way,” her answer is that; “The source of funding has to be less important than the standard of care. She is leading a lively discussion about innovations and integration of family planning services in the primary preventive health care system. Congresswoman Lois Capps (D-CA) emphasizes that federal support for family planning services is key to our economic recovery.

Part 5 – Lois Capps from Family Planning Health Services on Vimeo.

After Congresswoman Capps talked about the immediate opportunity to receive federal support for expanded family planning services, Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) celebrates the end of ‘gender as a pre-existing condition’ in health care and what the health care insurance reform victory means for women’s health.

Part 6 – Tammy Baldwin from Family Planning Health Services on Vimeo.

Congresswoman Baldwin (D-WI) summarizes the new opportunity and we wrap up this introductory video with a call to action. Look for expanded interviews as well as more interviews on this topic in the near future.

Contact us at www.belowthewaist.org

Mr. Newman Goes to Washington from Family Planning Health Services on Vimeo.

Juneau County District Attorney Scott Southworth wrote area school districts a letter which may intimidate teachers, administrators, and school board members from developing or teaching a comprehensive community-based human growth and development curriculum.

The unfortunate consequence of his action will not be to delay first sexual intercourse by Juneau County teens.  It is more likely that those teens, when they do become sexually active, will not have the information they need to protect themselves from unintended pregnancies or sexually transmitted infections. Many people do not get any sex education after high school, so it is also likely those teens will not have the health information they need to make informed health care and family planning decisions when they marry and/or become sexually active as adults.

District Attorney Southworth’s statement that schools teach about sex for pleasure or that sex education is analogous to teaching people ‘how to mix drinks,’ makes it obvious that he either was not in a reputable sex education program or he wasn’t paying attention. Although there are always a few examples of highly publicized unacceptable behavior that opponents of sex education point to, there is no accepted pre-college program that teaches human sexual response to minors and I know there is no Juneau County school district curriculum that teaches techniques of sexual pleasure.

What do reproductive health educators teach young people?

• They can prevent cancer by being vaccinated against HPV.
• Consistent and correct use of condoms can prevent sexually transmitted infections.
• Testicular and breast self-examinations are important preventive health care regimens.
• Folic acid is important to pre-pregnancy planning.
• Coercive sexual touching is illegal and destructive.
• Hormonal contraception can prevent pregnancy.
• . . . and other information that helps people make informed decisions to protect their health.

None of the material is erotic and none of it could be considered in a court of law to be “encouraging young people to have sex.”

Family Planning Health Services (FPHS) is a private non-profit corporation with a mission based on the ideal that information is better than ignorance when it comes to sexual health. When we are invited to participate in any classroom, our presentation respects school district standards. We strive to be age-appropriate and medically accurate. Our first concern is always the health and well-being of community families.

District Attorney Southworth has gained a lot of media attention and there will be controversy and fund-raising on all sides of this issue.  Through that turmoil, FPHS will continue to provide the community with access to family planning services and education that is responsible and professional. We support Juneau county school districts who educate our young people and we promise to support any district or local teacher who provides lawful sexuality education as described in The Healthy Youth Act and who is charged with a crime by District Attorney Southworth.

The author of an opinion letter printed in the Wausau Wisconsin paper this morning was reacting to a reader’s letter that was supporting family planning. She said: “If by preventing unplanned pregnancies, he is referring to dispensing contraception, how does that prevent unplanned pregnancies?’

Like the majority of states, Wisconsin has a Medicaid Family Planning Waiver that expands access to routine preventive contraceptive and STD care. Overall, our program has been successful at reducing geographic gaps in access. By providing contraception, we are reducing unintended pregnancies, reducing teen pregnancies, and reducing the need for abortions – all at substantial savings to taxpayers. Wisconsin’s estimated five-year savings was $487 million. Best of all, for states with budget shortfalls, Medicaid Family Planning expansions provide $9 in federal funds for every $1 in state funds.

There is an enormous national opportunity before us and very little time to waste on efforts to reason with the irrational.  Primary preventive health care delivery is changing and if we are to move closer to universal access to reproductive health care, reproductive health care providers and supporters must seize the opportunity.  Federal health care reform law provides the 27 states with these expansions with an opportunity to strengthen their existing programs by requesting a permanent state plan amendment from the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).  For the other 23 states and the District of Columbia, there is a parallel opportunity to begin providing these services.

In Wisconsin, we must move quickly to strengthen our program and solidify the gains we have made under the Doyle administration and we don’t need legislative action.  In eight months we will have a new governor and a new legislature. Even with a supportive administration, coordination and approval is not instantaneous.  So it is time to move ahead and get to work. Here are the terms with which we will approach our Department of Health Services:

A successful Medicaid family planning program must contain these eligibility and coverage essentials:

• Enrollment must be convenient
  • Presumptive eligibility must be available for provision of immediate (same day – same site) contraceptives and STD services.
  • Full eligibility must be processed in a timely manner to avoid gaps in coverage and gaps in care.
• Income eligibility must be broad.
• Covered comprehensive services must include most contraceptive methods and Emergency Contraception.
• Services must be confidential.
• Eligibility for students and minors must be based on their own income.

A successful Medicaid family planning program must contain these structural essentials:

• A formally established state department-level workgroup or council that brings key leadership in public health, family planning, and primary preventive health care together in an advisory capacity .
• A written commitment to integrating and normalizing sexual health care and education by fostering public-private partnerships.
• A clear commitment to the principal that all participants receiving Medicaid-paid health benefits have a right to choose a willing and qualified provider (including out-of-plan) for the reproductive health services they need.
• A written assurance that reimbursement rates to reproductive health care providers will be sufficient to maintain statewide access to family planning services.

We are moving ahead right now to expand, improve, and strengthen our family planning program by negotiating a permanent state plan amendment based on what we have learned over the past seven years.  That federal contract will protect and solidify our program’s gains. With that protection, we will continue to answer the question “How does dispensing contraception relate to preventing unwanted pregnancies?” not so much with rhetoric, but with results.

We recognize that the “Forty Days for Life” protests in front of our clinic bring us a lot of attention that can be put to good use. The picketing has resulted in many expressions of community support for Family Planning Health Services (FPHS) as well as a much higher level of visibility for the health care services we provide. On the other hand, the anti-abortion signs persistently misrepresent what FPHS actually does – confusing the public about whether FPHS provides abortion (we do not and we are prohibited by our grant contracts from even making referrals). FPHS provides contraceptive services, provides all-options information, and we are prochoice. That seems to be enough to draw the sanctimonious “prayer bullies” to our street corner . . . and soon they’ll be on yours.

These protests take place on the street corners of our nation, not just in our Central Wisconsin community, and it is important that the public and other health care providers know that they are opposed to contraception as well as abortion – that’s why they are picketing in Wausau.

Understanding that there is a need to connect the local to the state and the state to the national, FPHS is proudly supporting the newly launched “Forty 4 Forty” joint fund raising campaign of the Wisconsin Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and Pro-Choice Wisconsin. FPHS, because we are clearly not an abortion provider, can play an important role for all primary health care providers that the picketers are anti-contraception as well as anti-abortion.

The Forty4Forty campaign begins this week. A sign to solicit pledges for Forty 4 Forty will go up on our Wausau building tomorrow morning.

Last week, when one of the protestors said to me; “If they’re intimidated, that’s their problem,” he told me all I need to know.

Lon Newman
Executive Director
Family Planning Health Services

“A defender of the church,” proclaimed the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel headline for an extensive story about the new Archbishop-designate, Jerome Listecki. The subtitle for the article was: “Archbishop designate Listecki vows collaboration, but unafraid of debate.” The subtitle was probably derived from the bishop’s description of how he planned to participate in the political process. He said: “If we don’t challenge one another’s statements, then we’re relinquishing our responsibility to the common good.”

The following month, young Catholics for Choice (yCFC – a Washington D.C. based organization) and Family Planning Health Services (FPHS – an agency with family planning clinics in eight Wisconsin counties) formed a unique sectarian-secular advertising partnership, produced informational ads for broadcast, and then embarked on a two-day Wisconsin “road-trip” to draw media attention to their campaign and to build public (including the Catholic public) awareness and knowledge about emergency contraception.

The purpose of the joint media campaign was two-fold; 1) to inform the public about how Plan B works so they would have it on hand in advance of need and, 2) to inform Catholic women of reproductive age that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops health care directives permit the use of emergency contraception to prevent pregnancies resulting from rape.

In the January 2010 issue of the Journal of the Catholic Health Association of the United States, Ron Hamel, Ph.D., makes it very clear that the ethics of access to emergency contraception for Catholics needs to be fully examined and explained. Professor Hamel’s article and the YCFC/FPHS EC campaign are an effort to fulfill that responsibility when there is significant resistance.

The campaign succeeded in getting a response from the Archbishop-designate and thus succeeded in its secondary purpose. The headline on the Christmas Eve edition of the La Crosse Diocesan newspaper is: “Bishop Rejects Young Catholics for Choice Message.” The front page column ran adjacent to the departing bishop’s message. But what he rejected so prominently: “ . . . that Catholics can disregard Church teaching on contraception, abortion, and human sexuality in general and remain Catholics in good standing,” was only weakly connected to the message that yCFC and Family Planning Health Services (FPHS) were promoting.

Bishop Listecki, like most of the Catholic protestors in front of the FPHS clinic, will allow “no room for interpretation,” once the bishop’s authority has been invoked. Many within the church see the bishop’s pattern of authoritarian rebukes, condemnations, and admonitions as futile efforts to suppress dissent and they understand they are not the views of other Catholics or even the other American bishops.  Just as importantly, the denials and condemnations are not solely inflicted on the faithful. The prayer vigil protestors’ and Bishop Listecki’s efforts to eliminate access to emergency contraception, if they succeed, would apply to women regardless of their faith.

Erik Cieslewicz and Brooke Sperry have produced a documentary about the joint campaign that will be released February 17^th, 2010.  The web-posting will occur on the same day that another Lenten prayer vigil outside an FPHS clinic (which does not provide abortion services) begins in central Wisconsin. The video shows the challenge as well as the fun of the effort to educate the public in the face of consistent efforts to suppress and to misinform. Earlier, “40 Days for Life” prayer vigils played a large part in motivating FPHS and yCFC to cooperate in the advertising effort to correct misinformation being spread by their opponents.

Enjoy the video!

Catholic leaders know they have not persuaded one another, the public, or their own laity, to agree that contraception is evil. So when it comes to public policy, rather than engage in dialogue and debate, they seem to make a statement and end it with a “Dixi” (Latin for “I have spoken”) as though that is all that should be necessary.

For those who accept the authority of the Catholic hierarchy, that is enough.  But in the democratic process of establishing public policies that are respectful of Catholics and non-Catholics, it is unresponsive and insufficient.

Nonetheless, reproductive rights advocates have recently witnessed ultimatum upon ultimatum.

• Contraceptive benefits?                                         This College will close!
• Gay discrimination prohibited?                              No more poverty programs!
• Emergency contraception required?                        Emergency rooms to close!
• Pharmacists required to fill prescriptions?               They’ll be forced to quit!
• Health insurance reform with abortion coverage?     No health care reform!

This kind of tactic is often inaccurately called “blackmail,” but a better description would be “tantrum.” Infants and toddlers who, frustrated in their efforts to control the environment or their parents, sometimes act out emotionally, physically, and inappropriately.  Adults try to ignore this behavior and toddlers outgrow it.  “But,” www.KidsHealth.org advises us; “do not reward your child after a tantrum by giving in. This will only prove to your little one that the tantrum was effective.”

The message that we must persuade our elected officials and policy makers to learn is that good policy-making must be based on evidence, science, justice and reason and that means a civil discussion with an informed and engaged audience is key. We may not always be able to ignore childish political tantrums, but we must never accommodate and encourage them.

For this reason, Young Catholics for Choice (yCFC) and Family Planning Health Services (FPHS) will collaborate and a launch a Wisconsin-based advertising and media campaign to promote information about emergency contraception (EC). 

In terms of public discussion, misinformation and distortion about emergency contraception has confused the public, policy makers, and especially Catholic parishioners. Most people have an incomplete and inaccurate understanding of EC. Until that changes, for women who need EC, neither the health care principle of ‘informed consent nor the religious principle of ‘informed conscience’ will have real meaning.  The purpose of the campaign is to replace misunderstanding with evidence and knowledge so individuals, including people of every faith, can make decisions about emergency contraception with a more fully informed conscience.

Each of the four cities where the informational ads will run has a distinct example of the need for a more informed public.

· In Eau Claire, a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner reported to us that an area Catholic hospital is violating the intent of state law because it refuses to offer EC to rape victims unless the victim submits to time-consuming, expensive, and unnecessary testing. 

· In Milwaukee, the new archbishop has declared his opposition to Wisconsin’s “Compassionate Care for Rape Victims” law based on a medically-unsupported belief that the most common form of EC (Plan B ™) “causes abortions.”

· In Green Bay, two television stations refused to run the ads we produced with Young Catholics for Choice earlier than 9:00 p.m. because they were “too controversial.”

· In Wausau, local priests routinely pray the rosary in front of our family planning clinic (which does not provide abortions or medical referrals for abortion) with signs that say “Stop Chemical Abortion” and “Family Planners Promote Child Promiscuity.”

Our collaborative informational advertising about emergency contraception will begin this week and bring together secular and sectarian voices to inform our citizens. There will be radio and television ads throughout Wisconsin (and on the web) to encourage women of reproductive age to go to www.EZEC.org to learn more about EC and to have Plan B™ on hand before they need it.

Speaking about political engagement and the Catholic Church, the new Archbishop of Milwaukee stated: “If we don’t challenge one another’s statements, then we’re relinquishing our responsibility to the common good.”  Our emergency contraception information campaign will meet that responsibility with sectarian and secular voices.

In the politics of abstinence-only education, we have a lot to learn. With the full Senate poised to vote this month on the $163 billion Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (FY10 Labor-HHS) appropriations bill, advocates of evidence-based comprehensive sexuality education programs don’t have very much time for study.

The House appropriations bill and the Senate Appropriation Labor-HHS Subcommittee bill have replaced abstinence-only funding with evidence-based teen pregnancy and sexually-transmitted disease prevention funding. It looks like the end of the line for Abstinence-only. Before we can write our RFPs, we will have to maintain our position through the full Senate vote and then through the conference committee. Who will be our strongest player in these political poker games? It will be my Wisconsin Congressman, David R. Obey, House Appropriations Committee Chair.

Here, then, are the lessons I think we need to learn:

I. Dave Obey may be ill-tempered, stubborn, outspoken and egocentric, but in a tough game, those aren’t the only things to like about him. He is fiercely devoted to quality education and access to health care. He is even more intensely focused on getting the most progressive appropriations bill he can get through his committee and signed into law.

II. For the last ten years or so, opponents of comprehensive sex education have used abortion politics to make sex education and contraception bargaining chips in Washington. They often succeeded in the Appropriations Committee because they had the votes and they had the President. But that’s no longer an excuse for us to be outmaneuvered or a reason to be defensive. Let the programs the religious zealots won under the last administration be the first-on-the-table bargaining chips for awhile. Instead of trying to block every negative effort by our opponents, now we can work with our majority congressional leadership to promote sound health policy and to fund effective sex education and prevention programs.

III. Over those same ten years, feminists, family planning advocates, sex education supporters and others (me, for example) whispered and shouted in frustration about Dave Obey’s willingness to cut deals with our opponents. The reality has changed. The Appropriations Bill that passed the House is Dave Obey’s Bill. If he wanted to restore abstinence-only funding, he would have done it. He didn’t.

IV. Because the House appropriations bill has the language we want, Dave Obey will be playing our hand in the conference committee reconciliation process. We need to work as hard as we can to make sure he has the strongest cards possible because when it comes to bluffing, the proponents of abstinence-only education are world-class champions.

V. Over his 40 years in Congress, Dave Obey has offended Catholic Bishops, NARAL, SIECUS, pharmaceutical companies, Presidents Reagan, Clinton, Carter, and Bush. He’s offended Rush Limbaugh, Speaker Pelosi and he’s probably irritated President Obama. I know he’s made me furious many times, but I like him anyway because he is a principled equal-opportunity offender. The lesson is that his talent is not being agreeable, but getting an agreement.

The summary of these lessons (this will be on the quiz) is that we must work hard right now to preserve President Obama’s (and now Dave Obey’s) evidence-based pregnancy prevention funding through the full Senate vote and continue the alliance with Congressman Obey to maintain the initiative through the conference committee reconciliation. We must work with Dave Obey now because when it comes to sex education, our opponents will stop at nothing.

Originally published on rhrealitycheck.org

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sexual-justice/abstinence-education-dis_b_281014.html

This axe will certainly fall, but a new incarnation in the form of a redefined pitch for federal funding for “Abstinence-centered” programs is already in play.  In fact, repackaged “Abstinence-centered” programs are busily developing marketing approaches and preparing grant proposals for the President’s new teen pregnancy prevention initiative – the one that supposedly displaced Abstinence-only-until-marriage funding. On May 11th on Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin’s Abstinence Coalition executive director and member of the National Abstinence Education Association (NAEA) board, Sally Ladky, expressed the national strategy to maintain their federal funding stream.

The strategy is to co-opt the language of comprehensive sex education and the reincarnation is already complete.  Here are the major marketing elements as Ms. Ladky expressed them:

• “We’re about risk-avoidance.”
• “We are evidence-based.”
• “We’ve never called ourselves ‘abstinence-only’. We’re abstinence-centered. . . We do talk about contraception.”
• “Comprehensive sex education just talks about the physical – we’re more holistic than that.”

A November 2008 NEAE letter to then President-elect Obama prophesies the transfiguration as evidence-based, risk avoidance, abstinence-centered, holistic sex education that includes contraception.  (That’s a pretty good description of programs that I’ve been supporting for thirty years.)

When the Department of Health and Human Services removes the abstinence-only restrictions from the federal funds and instead requires evidence-based medically accurate teen pregnancy prevention applications, the agencies sending in the Requests for Proposals will include the same agencies which are now receiving abstinence-only-until-marriage funds:

1. The crisis pregnancy centers that refuse to give out information about emergency contraception;
2. The ‘virginity pledges;’
3. The abstinence clown’
4. The folks who carefully explain the failure rates of condoms and contraceptives without explaining the infection and pregnancy rates when they’re not used.

As frustrating and perplexing as the reincarnation of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs will be, the principle of competition for grant funds is time-honored and broadly accepted. We would like to believe that the cards will be unmarked and the deck will not be stacked against comprehensive sex education. But if the NAEA has its way, there won’t be a fair deal.  In the May 11th WPR interview, Ms. Ladky says: “We’re looking for funding parity.  We think that each of us should have one-half of the funds.”

The advocates for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs argue that family planning funding, especially Title X, which provides medical services related to contraception, cancer prevention, and STD testing and treatment should be put into the pot with the sex education funds.  In other words, family planning funds should be added to the pot and the abstinence programs should be guaranteed half of the winnings before the cards are dealt.

Equating Title X family planning health care services with community and school-based sex education is problematic and unworkable.  Hundreds of thousands of women and men would potentially lose access to primary preventive reproductive health care. It is a cynical ploy to take funding away from Planned Parenthood and other family planning programs. The monumental irony in the “abstinence-centered” faithfuls’ request that half of the stakes be set aside for them before the game begins is that if abstinence-only-until-marriage and comprehensive sex education are both evidence-based and medically accurate – if both program models include risk reduction instruction such as contraceptive methods and condom use – on what distinction would the parity division of money be based?

It was simpler when comprehensive sex education advocates refused these funds and worked  to eliminate them because they are sectarian and because they have been ineffectively used. After Congressman Obey carries out the Presidential budget sentence, advocates on both sides will compete for the redefined “common ground” teen pregnancy prevention funds — and it will require an act of faith to tell them apart.

For almost a year now, Pro-Life Wisconsin (PLW) has maintained a protest campaign at our family planning and WIC clinics in Central Wisconsin. PLW activities have included a ‘verbal hijacking’ of our Raising Women’s Voices “Speak Out” on women’s health care so that those who wished to speak on issues unrelated to abortion or contraception were by-and-large unheard in the auditorium. Over the Lenten season, PLW and its local supporters participated in the “40 Days for Life” national campaign — conducting a ‘continuous’ prayer vigil outside our clinic offices.  When asked by local reporters why they were participating in this effort, they said it was to stop abortion.  We do not perform abortions at any of our facilities.  As the 40 Days effort has come to an end, we want to share what we have learned.

The 10 Suggestions:

I.    Publicly express sincere concerns about patient and public safety.
We wrote an editorial which focused on traffic conditions near the clinic and how patients had been affected by the protestors. After the editorial was printed, the protestors stopped harassing patients and obstructing visibility for drivers.
II.    Leave the religious debate to religious organizations.
We spoke with supportive local parishioners of many denominations and asked for their help. The Wisconsin Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice held a news conference that received front page coverage and many church leaders explained that their religious traditions do not oppose family planning or, in many cases, abortion.
III.    Respect the rights as well as the responsibilities of the protesters.
We consistently and publicly expressed our respect for the right to protest, but we also reported any obstruction of clinic entrances or exits (a violation of federal law).
IV.    Maintain Security and Surveillance.
We used digital cameras and recorders to record video covering the entrances and exits at all time.  We also took routine photographs of the protesters. We reported the minor acts of vandalism, entrance and exit obstruction, and harassment to local law enforcement and were able to provide the computerized records as well.

V.    Act don’t React and have a sense of humor.
We hung three large red, white, and blue banners with one word on each one: Condoms Save Lives. When the local newspaper took photos of the protestors, the banners provided a public health message. We also ran general awareness ads on television talking about the services we provide and the value to women’s health. I put up a shadow box with a stone inside, a mallet on the side, and had the glass inscribed “The First Stone – John 8:1-11.” Someone in a hooded sweatshirt stole the mallet, but they left the stone where it was.
VI.    Keep your eyes on the majority.
Quantity matters in the political world, where public policy is decided.  Support for contraception and sex education is growing, even within the parishes recruiting protesters. There is no need to belittle our opposition or demean ourselves.
VII.    Stay focused on facts, evidence, and your mission.
We resisted temptations to be diverted from scientific evidence, provable facts, and the mission of our organization.  Ours is a health services mission of universal access to maternal and child health including reproductive care.  The mission of our opponents is theological and political, so we invited others to speak from those perspectives whenever possible.

VIII.    Follow the law and enforce the law.
One of the opponents complained to city zoning officials that the “Condoms Save Lives” banners intruded over the public right-of-way. We moved them to comply and showed the officials photographs of protestor signs placed in violation of the same ordinance. We asked for equal enforcement.
IX.    Thank contributors and supporters.
You can never express too much appreciation to your supporters, contributors, and your employees.  Use the opportunity to express appreciation and to network.

X.    Let them speak!
The opposition has been unsuccesful persuading even their parishioners(Catholics and Choice) on contraception and sex education. Since their position is fundamentally faith-based and authoritarian, it is unlikely to look rational from other perspectives. At the Women’s Health Speak Out, at our news conferences, in web-postings, in letters-to-the-editor, and even standing in front of our clinics, they communicate quite clearly.  Most people see them as they are and most people disagree with their beliefs and with their tactics.