It was a Sunday morning, and I was sitting in my kitchen in New York drinking coffee with Kirk. I was two years into the job at Planned Parenthood, working harder than ever in my life. The twins were in high school, and I tried to be home on Sundays at least. The 24/7 nature of my work meant there wasn’t a lot of extra time for parenting, and Kirk was, per usual, taking on way more than half of the responsibility—and doing it with total joy.
The phone rang, and I picked it up. As strange as it is, I can’t remember who was on the other end. But I certainly remember what they told me.
“George Tiller has been shot,” they said. “He was in his church, handing out programs for the service, when someone came right up and shot him. Reports are he died right there.”
I was in shock. “Did they catch the shooter?” I asked.
“Yes, it seems so. He literally just walked up and shot him in front of everyone, in cold blood. This is a terrible, terrible day.”
• • •
I have always been an expert worrier, but at Planned Parenthood I’d learned to prioritize the worrying. On any given day the list could begin with “Did we get the website up for the new birth control campaign?” or “What happened in court today in Texas?” But what every Planned Parenthood leader in every state in the country worries about the most is the safety of our staff and patients. On that day in May 2009 our worst fears were realized.
George Tiller was a beloved doctor and an abortion provider in Wichita, Kansas, and while he wasn’t a Planned Parenthood doctor, he was an integral part of our community. We referred patients to him, and he to us. For several years he had provided abortions to women from all across the country, particularly women who needed to terminate late in their pregnancy. He dealt with some of the most medically complicated cases. The walls of his office were papered with thank-you notes from grateful women he’d treated with dignity and respect at one of the most difficult times of their lives. He had so many sayings, “Tillerisms,” as people called them, that someone compiled a list: It is never the wrong time to do the next right thing. It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice. His motto, “Trust women,” lives on in buttons and hashtags and is repeated every time politicians try to intervene in the personal medical decisions of women and their families (which is almost every day).
George was a hero in part because his path was so unlikely. His father was a well-respected women’s doctor in Wichita. In the 1950s and ’60s George served in the navy. His own plan was to become a dermatologist, until one tragic day, when his sister, brother-in-law, and parents were killed in a plane crash. George decided to go into women’s health instead, and before long, women were coming to George to ask, “Can you help us like your father did?” That’s when he realized his father had provided abortion care to women in Kansas—something he had never known while his father was alive—and his loss left a void in the community. And so, in the heart of Kansas, George became one of the few providers of safe and legal abortion.
In the years George and his family lived in Wichita, they faced unimaginable threats to their safety. He had been the target of some of the most hateful, violent extremists and had the bullet scars to prove it. Once his clinic was firebombed. Before he began rebuilding, he hung up a sign that said “Hell no, we won’t go.” The fact that he was in the line of fire every day only made his ability to keep a sense of humor that much more admirable.
He was a gentle man, devoted to his church and family. I had met him at medical conferences and, like others who knew him, appreciated his commitment to the work as well as his passion for politics. He was constantly thinking about the bigger picture and spent a lot of time contemplating how on earth we were going to change the awful political climate in Kansas. His own favorite Tillerism, and one I often think about to this day, was “Attitude is everything.”
I couldn’t believe he was dead. Almost immediately I started hearing from friends, staff, and volunteers. They all knew George, who had survived so many other attacks; the thought that a terrorist could shoot him in his own church, where he ushered each week, was too much to bear. As I sat there at the kitchen table, I thought of the spree of violent killings of abortion providers back in the 1990s. Until that Sunday morning I had thought—naïvely—that those days were behind us. It was the first time anything like that had happened in my time as president of Planned Parenthood.
I called Planned Parenthood’s CEO in Kansas, Peter Brownlie. Like George, Peter was known across the country for standing up to the state to protect abortion access and the confidentiality of patient medical records. Peter was shaken to his core—George was a friend and hero, and they had been through so much together.
“Let me know what we can do to support you, Peter,” I said. “As soon as you know anything about the service arrangements, can you tell me? So many of us from around the country will want to be there.”
Once the funeral was set, I flew out to Kansas with Lynne Randall, who ran abortion services for Planned Parenthood. Peter and his wife, Deborah Jenkins, met us at the airport. Together, we headed for the hotel.
The outpouring of support for George’s family—his wife, their four children, and many grandchildren—was overwhelming. “They had to move the service to the biggest church in Wichita,” Peter said. “George’s home church couldn’t begin to handle the flood of people. Even as it is, they are going to set up overflow space for those who can’t make it into the sanctuary.”
“I think we need to leave really early tomorrow morning for the service,” he went on. “The crowd is going to be enormous, and we have seats, but the protesters are going to be out in force. The local police are expecting Fred Phelps and his group.” Phelps and his followers at Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka protested against Catholics, LGBTQ people, the Jewish community, and others. They were notorious for picketing the funerals of fallen soldiers, and the Southern Poverty Law Center had declared them a hate group.
“That sounds right,” I replied. “Are you sure you have enough security?”
Peter lifted up his shirt. He was wearing a bulletproof vest. “It’s what we have to do here in Kansas,” he said. There was nothing I could say. That’s the kind of courage Planned Parenthood leaders have in states across the country.
We drove to the hotel and met up with Pedro Irigonegaray, who had been George’s lawyer over the years, and a few other folks who had flown in from out of state. Peter, Pedro, Lynne, and I sat in the hotel bar and talked about George, who had to have been in court more than any other doctor, constantly suing or being sued by the state’s fanatical attorney general, Phill Kline.
“I remember the time George was shot in his car by that violent protester,” Pedro said. “She hit his hands, which is the last thing any doctor wants. But George was amazed at her incompetence.” It was a somber moment, since the latest attempt had succeeded. We shared George stories until it was time to call it a night.
The next morning a security car picked us up two hours early, in hopes we could get to the church before the protests got going. It was a clear, quiet morning in Wichita, but as we were cresting the hill near the church, I saw a phalanx of Harley motorcycles with huge American flags attached to poles off the back. There were dozens lined up, single file, and the riders held their helmets under their arms. I thought to myself, Oh no, the place is already surrounded by protesters.
“This doesn’t look good,” I said to Peter.
The road was open, so we continued on. As we approached, I realized that the motorcyclists weren’t there to protest. They were, in fact, the Patriot Guard Riders, a volunteer group that ensures dignity and respect at memorial services honoring military heroes and veterans. As we got out of the car, it was hard not to cry. These burly motorcycle riders, with their American flags and attendant insignia, were honoring George and protecting his family and friends. In that moment, divisions of ideology and politics no longer mattered. We were all Americans, joined in sadness, paying tribute to a fallen hero.
“Thank you,” I said as we passed the entourage. “You cannot know what it means to have you here.”
“We honor our fellow veterans. It’s our duty,” one of them replied. Two imposing tattooed men in leather vests quietly escorted George’s wife, Jeanne, from her car into the church.
As far as the eye could see, people had gathered to pay tribute to George. Some wore T-shirts with his most famous sayings and held white carnations. Others carried photos of him. The church was full. Out in the lobby, baskets contained Tillerisms written on slips of paper as keepsakes. George was eulogized by his fraternity brothers from the University of Kansas, and his children spoke. The pastor of the church he attended each week was there with an “Attitude is everything” button on his robe.
“Just last week,” his daughter Jennifer said, “Dad and I and his grandkids were at Disney World, on every ride. Dad loved it, and I’m so glad we had that time with him. He loved his family.”
Jeanne stood up and sang “The Lord’s Prayer,” which she dedicated “to my best buddy and the love of my life.” She has a beautiful voice. I do not know how she was able to get through the song.
Many of our staff and community hadn’t been able to go to the services in Kansas, so we planned to have our own memorial for George at our national offices in New York. The word had just gone out that we were holding a service, open to all, when I got a call from Luis Ubiñas, president of the Ford Foundation, one of the most important foundations to support social justice work, including women’s rights. Luis and his wife, Deb Tolman, had become friends of mine, and in fact, Deb specialized as a feminist researcher and professor in gender and sexuality.
“Deb and I would like to talk at your memorial service for Dr. Tiller,” he said.
“Well, that would be wonderful, Luis. We’re expecting a lot of people from the community,” I replied.
He hesitated for a moment, and I could hear him take a breath on the other end. “But you see,” he said, “we especially want to be there, because Dr. Tiller was our doctor.”
Deb and Luis have two extraordinary sons, whom I knew. But I hadn’t known until that moment that years ago they’d had a much-wanted pregnancy that had come to a heartbreaking end. They had learned late in term that the fetus was not viable and that Deb’s life was at risk, and one of only three doctors in the country who could help them was Dr. Tiller. They put their trust in him because he trusted women. As their experience unfolded, they learned that one of the reasons Dr. Tiller was so remarkable was that he loved and respected his patients; he listened to women.
The days surrounding George’s death were painfully sad, but they were also a reminder of the incredible power of working with a group of people who can support each other through the most difficult tragedies. There was nothing good to come of all this. A brave man had been shot in cold blood—a man who had cared for so many women, especially women in the most terrible medical circumstances. But George’s legacy and work inspired a renewed commitment among many of us. From that day forward, whenever one of us at Planned Parenthood was trying to make an important decision or dealing with the latest political attack, we would ask, What would George do? Not long after his death, the Planned Parenthood Federation voted to ensure that every affiliate across the country provided abortion in at least one health center. The years that followed brought an onslaught of laws introduced in states across the country to make it harder for women to access abortion—by forcing them to wait seventy-two hours, undergo biased counseling, or have medically unnecessary procedures. Through it all, we returned again and again to George’s mantra: “Trust women.”
Meanwhile the ground was starting to shift. One of the reasons everyone knew George’s name was because he had been public about being an abortion provider. Back then, most were not—and for good reason. Back in the ’90s, Dr. David Gunn, Dr. John Britton, and Dr. Barnett Slepian had been murdered, as well as staff at two health centers in Brookline, Massachusetts: Shannon Lowney and LeeAnn Nichols. The Right’s Nuremberg Project printed “Wanted” posters that featured the names and faces of abortion providers and became the subject of much publicity as well as a lawsuit.
After George’s death a wave of doctors began to change the pattern. They understood that we could never change attitudes toward abortion unless people started speaking openly—so that’s just what they did. In 2010 the New York Times Magazine published a feature story about doctors who provide abortion services, including a brave and committed Planned Parenthood doctor named Rachael Phelps. I was impressed by her courage and knew such a story was breaking new ground. It generated a great deal of conversation and argument within the women’s health community. There were plenty of people whose response was “Speaking out isn’t safe. That’s not what we do.” But brave individuals like Dr. Phelps ushered in an entirely new era of abortion providers being open and public. Today many doctors are also increasingly advocates for their patients and for women everywhere. Now, no lobbying day on Capitol Hill is complete without Planned Parenthood doctors and clinicians, wearing their white coats and stethoscopes, walking through the halls of Congress to meet with elected officials about the care their patients need. I know George would be proud of these young doctors. Seeing how they’re shattering stigma and refusing to hide in the shadows fills me with hope that we will one day be able to break out of this political back-and-forth and start recognizing abortion for what it is: health care, and a vital service that is part of so many people’s lives.
• • •
Dealing with adversaries isn’t easy, but when people on your own team turn on you, it’s a tough pill to swallow. That was what happened in 2012 with Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the largest breast cancer advocacy organization in the United States.
For many years Planned Parenthood has partnered with community organizations to increase education and early detection for breast cancer. One in eight women in America will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime, yet many women do not have access to early screenings that can catch cancer when it’s most treatable. Even worse, African American women are 40 percent more likely to die of breast cancer than white women. It’s a national disgrace.
Komen, especially at the local level, knew that for many patients, especially those without insurance, their annual visit to Planned Parenthood was the only time they got a breast exam. Like other women’s health care providers, Planned Parenthood refers women who need further care to radiology clinics, and Komen provided grants that helped ensure patients could get that care. Many clinicians are like ombudsmen, helping women with no insurance and no doctor navigate the health care system, which is no easy feat. Komen appreciated that we reached women who might otherwise go without care. So you could have blown me over when Dawn Laguens, at the time Planned Parenthood’s vice president of policy, advocacy, and communications, called me and said, “I’m hearing a rumor that Komen is going to put out a statement saying they will no longer work with Planned Parenthood.”
“Are you serious?” I responded. “We work together all across the country. They’re the leading breast cancer organization, and we’re the leading reproductive health organization. We’re partners—that just doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well, they’ve been shaky ever since Congress tried to defund us earlier this year,” Dawn said. “We do have tremendous working relationships at the local level—that’s not where this is coming from. It seems like someone at the top is trying to get political points by dropping us.”
This was awful news—not only for Planned Parenthood but for the thousands of women who counted on our partnership to get lifesaving care and education. I was furious. It was one thing to have our opponents coming after us every day; watching our friends turn their backs on us was a stinging betrayal.
“They want to get on the phone with us, off the record,” Dawn reported. “Let’s hear what they have to say.”
Not long after, Dawn and I got on a conference call with the acting executive director for the Komen Foundation, who explained that from now on, there would be no more partnership with Planned Parenthood. “But we aren’t going to announce anything publicly,” she added, as though that would somehow reassure us.
“What do you mean, you aren’t going to say anything in public?” I asked, incredulous. “You think, in this highly charged political environment, it’s going to stay a secret?”
“We don’t want to make a big deal of this,” she said. “It would be better if it were just understood between us.”
Dawn and I looked at each other. Did they have any idea what the press would do with this story? How the opponents of Planned Parenthood would blast this all across America?
“Well, I’m sure that’s how you would like it to be,” I said. “But I’m already seeing posts online by the most vocal antichoice groups about how Komen is ending this relationship. You may mean well, but I’m not sure you know what kind of groups you are dealing with.”
Dawn added, “The organizations you’re sidling up to aren’t working with women who need breast cancer screenings. These are organizations whose sole purpose is to end access to Planned Parenthood, and frankly, they’re using you to do it.”
Having been the targets of the antichoice movement, Dawn and I knew what was coming. We had a few more conversations with Komen, asking them to reconsider. Their actions were going to be devastating for the very women who counted on them.
But Komen was undeterred. So Dawn and I talked it over. “We have to get ahead of this,” she suggested, “and at least let our patients and the public know what’s coming.” She was rightly concerned that it would become a political story, when what we needed to emphasize was what it would mean for the thousands of women who depend on us for breast exams. “We need to get something out on Monday, because already the right-wing blogs are putting pink ribbons on their websites, ready to champion Komen for severing ties with Planned Parenthood.”
So on Monday, January 31, 2012, without fanfare, we sent an email to more than a million supporters with the subject line “Disappointing news from a friend.” The message explained that we had been notified by Komen that they would no longer work with Planned Parenthood. We were disappointed and hoped they would reconsider. In the meantime we promised to do everything possible to make sure our patients could get the care they needed, and we asked our supporters to stand with us. Boy, did they.
Within minutes the internet exploded.
Women began posting to the Komen website in droves. Komen frantically tried to take down the comments, which only served to enrage people. Women whose comments were erased turned to Twitter instead. We began to get calls from donors and people who wanted to make up whatever losses we had in breast cancer funding. One of those first calls was from New York’s mayor Michael Bloomberg, who stepped up immediately with foundation support. Others followed suit: the actors Scarlett Johansson and America Ferrera, the author Judy Blume, and The Decemberists, an indie band from Oregon.
By Wednesday 1.3 million people had tweeted in support of Planned Parenthood. One supporter joked, “Will Planned Parenthood please give Twitter back?” The story made the front page of the New York Times, twice. It was on every network. Many women reporters who were breast cancer survivors were outraged, including Andrea Mitchell, who interviewed the head of Komen on her show, saying, “I have to tell you, this is shocking for a lot of your longtime supporters.” More than two dozen members of Congress signed an open letter urging Komen to right their wrong.
Even many local Komen chapters reached out to our health centers, hoping the split could be repaired. But no matter how personal it felt, Planned Parenthood staff across the country refused to say anything negative about Komen publicly or to the press. As usual, the people closest to the patients knew the work we did together was irreplaceable.
Three days after we sent that email to supporters, Komen called to reverse course. They said they hoped we could work together again, and we have ever since. In addition, with the millions of dollars we raised that week, Planned Parenthood launched a new breast health initiative to provide more breast exams and support for women in need than ever before.
I was overcome with relief. It’s hard to find a single family in America who hasn’t been touched by breast cancer, and the screenings and early detection Planned Parenthood provides in partnership with Komen were at the heart of our mission. Not only had we managed to prevent our patients from losing access to this care, but a great diversity of people stood with us and refused to let women be used as a political bargaining chip.
Years ago Dutch Leonard, a Harvard professor who specializes in social enterprise and nonprofit management, said something I’ve never forgotten: “Nietzsche wrote that ‘The most common form of human stupidity is forgetting what we were trying to accomplish.’ In other words, always, always, always remember what you are trying to do.” It seems so simple, and that is perhaps its elegance. Planned Parenthood is here for women who need health care, regardless of politics. In fact, if you’re a woman who finds a lump in your breast, politics is the furthest thing from your mind.
When you’re working for social change, there are new battles every day, and you never know if you’re going to lose or win. But when I go home at night, if I can look in the mirror and say, I did the right thing by women, that’s the only thing that matters. The Komen debacle crystallized that purpose in my mind like never before. And the truly incredible part was realizing that, maybe even more than anyone had imagined, the American people felt the same way.
• • •
People often ask, “Why do this? Why get up every day and do work that is so hard?” But the fact is, nobody ever asked the women I worked with in rural Texas, New Orleans, or East Los Angeles how they got out of bed every morning to do such tough jobs. Being able to choose to do work that makes a difference is a privilege.
When another awful bill is introduced in another state legislature, or I’m trying to rebut lies about Planned Parenthood on national television, or just dealing with the kind of internal politics that are part of life at any big organization, I often think of the health center manager I met in Des Moines, Iowa. One morning, before the center opened, we talked while she set up her procedure room for the day, organizing the cabinets the way she liked and getting the exam table ready for the first patient.
“You know,” she confessed, “it gets hard, especially with the politics and the protesters. A few months ago I even started thinking about taking an easier job. But then I came to work, and I saw my patients. I held a woman’s hand through her procedure and looked her in the eye. And I realized: they need me. They need me as much as any person has ever needed someone. How can I walk out on them?” She’s right. At the end of the day, that’s all that matters.
Of course that doesn’t make it any more fun to listen to the things people yell at me when I walk into a health center, or to read my Twitter mentions (something I try to avoid at all costs). Worst of all are the attacks on my kids—those really hurt. I still think about the interview I did a few months ago with a male reporter who spent several minutes asking inappropriate, invasive questions about abortion; that was nothing new, and I could handle it. But when he started asking belittling questions about my daughter Lily and how she got her job on Capitol Hill, implying that she couldn’t get there on her own—that was a bridge too far. It’s hard enough for young women to succeed in politics or climb the career ladder without the casual sexism of a snarky podcast host. I clenched my teeth and got through it, but I didn’t stop fuming until I finally finished the interview, walked out of the building, took a few deep breaths, and went on with my day.
I try never to be so immune to criticism that I just shut it all out—after all, sometimes there’s a grain of truth to it. But I’ve learned from Mom’s experiences and my own not to let it determine how I feel about myself. If I did, I simply would not be able to function some days—like the time, in the middle of an effort to defund Planned Parenthood, when my personal email address wound up on a right-wing blog. In a matter of hours my inbox was full of the same hateful message copied and pasted from thousands of people, telling me I was a baby killer, I was going to hell, and all the rest. More than anything else, it was profoundly annoying having to dig through all the junk in order to find the emails I actually needed to read.
But then, by accident or by chance, I opened one of the emails. It began, “I know you think this is just going to be another awful screed against you and against Planned Parenthood. Your email address was forwarded to me from my mother-in-law, who sent it to all of her antichoice friends. I’m hoping somehow you find this note among all the hate mail because I think Planned Parenthood is great. You were there for me when I was in college, and I’ll never forget it.” Right there, in the middle of it all, was a diamond in the rough. That’s true most of the time, if you’re willing to look for it.
The hands-down best part of working for an organization like Planned Parenthood is that inspiration is everywhere, even at the slightly run-down health center I once visited in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was an older building, badly in need of a new coat of paint. As we parked the car, I saw a young man and woman walking out the door together into the parking lot. It was in the spring, right about time for graduation. They couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen, and she was wearing a big varsity letter jacket with “Seniors 2008” written on it. I didn’t know their backstory. Did they have parents they couldn’t talk to? Were they worried they were pregnant? Were they trying to get birth control? But watching them made me think about how, for those teenagers, Planned Parenthood was the only thing standing between them and an uncertain future. It’s not often that you get to see the immediate difference you’re making in people’s lives. But that day I did.
Every job has its own hurdles and challenges, and doing the right work means there will be some tough days. If there aren’t, I figure I need to set my sights higher. Some of them have left me sad and resolute, while others have helped me reconnect to the core of why I do what I do. And knowing that there are people who get up every day, face down the picketers and protesters, and do everything they can to help a woman with a lump in her breast or a young couple in Albuquerque get the health care they deserve is what makes me want to stay in the fight.