Molly Ivins said it best: “Since you don’t always win, you got to learn to enjoy just fightin’ the good fight.”
In all my years as an organizer, I’ve learned that you lose a lot more than you win. If you can’t celebrate the victories when they come along, and have a little fun the rest of the time, you just might be in the wrong line of work.
To put this in context: When Planned Parenthood was founded more than a hundred years ago, birth control was illegal. Back in 1916 a nurse named Margaret Sanger, along with her sister Ethel and a volunteer named Fania Mindell, opened the first birth control clinic in America. It was a tiny storefront in Brooklyn, where women could get a ten-cent pamphlet about preventing pregnancy. From day one women lined up around the block—women pushing baby buggies, holding babies in their arms. Ten days later an undercover police officer posing as a mother busted Margaret and threw her in jail—where she taught her fellow inmates about birth control.
Margaret began traveling the country, and a movement was born. She spoke to nurses in St. Paul, Minnesota, and women’s clubs in Los Angeles; factory women in Racine, Wisconsin, and farmworkers in Tucson, Arizona. When the city council of Portland, Oregon, met behind closed doors to pass an ordinance banning Margaret’s pamphlets, the women in town made pamphlets of their own, which read, “Shall five men legislate in secret against ten thousand women?” Suddenly Planned Parenthood centers started cropping up in towns across America. Once, on a visit to Dallas, the local Planned Parenthood CEO Ken Lambrecht and I stopped by the Ripley Shirt Factory. Years ago Katie Ripley, with the full knowledge of her husband, George, who owned the factory, would send empty shirt boxes to New York City. Organizers there would fill them with diaphragms, mark them “Returns,” and ship them back to Dallas, where women would gratefully get one of the earliest methods of birth control.
It wasn’t until the 1960s that a Planned Parenthood employee in Connecticut named Estelle Griswold decided to challenge the archaic laws outlawing birth control. With the help of her medical director, Dr. C. Lee Buxton, she started handing out birth control to women in hopes of getting arrested. The police obliged, and Estelle fought her case all the way to the US Supreme Court. In 1965, Griswold v. Connecticut legalized birth control for married couples.
Women have been searching for ways to prevent pregnancy for all of recorded history. In the United States we’ve been fighting about birth control for the better part of the past century, and there’s no sign of that changing anytime soon.
For those of you who don’t remember the long and arduous process of passing Obamacare, you might think that the most controversial topics were drug pricing or cracking down on insurance premiums. Nope. Nearly every knock-down, drag-out fight had to do with women’s health.
Passing health reform had been one of President Obama’s signature campaign promises, and he made it a top priority soon after taking office in 2009. Everyone, especially those of us working in health care, understood that finally fixing our broken health care system, as members of both parties had been trying to do for decades, would make a big difference for millions of Americans.
Back then, the uninsured rate in America was at its highest point in a generation. At Planned Parenthood we saw every day how the lack of health insurance affected our patients. This was an amazing opportunity to take a big leap forward.
In the early days of the fight for health care reform, I went to a press conference with Barbara Mikulski, a senator from Maryland and the longest serving woman in Congress, to announce Planned Parenthood’s support for Obamacare. We were in the Capitol Visitor Center in a room overflowing with people. She always brought a step stool to public appearances, and this day was no exception. She jumped up to the microphone, highly distinctive with her vibrant yellow jacket and Spray Net hairdo, and pulled out her bright red lipstick. Smearing it on, she shouted, “Get ready, women, we are going to war!”
Of course she was right. During the many months it took to pass Obamacare, the debates over what to include in health care reform and what to leave out were often contentious. In one infamous hearing, Senator Jon Kyl from Arizona objected to covering maternity care, huffing, “I’ve never needed it.” Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan shot back, “I think your mother probably did.” I’ve been a huge fan of hers forever!
After many similar arguments had been waged and won, there was one last topic to resolve: the issue of abortion. A proposal had been introduced at the last minute—with support from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops—that would prevent insurance plans from covering abortion services under the new health care law. The amendment went against everything we stood for at Planned Parenthood.
For help, I turned to Laurie Rubiner. Laurie had come on to run our government relations office in Washington, and she was smart and savvy. She had worked on health care policy on both sides of the aisle, including for then Senator Hillary Clinton. Not only that, she had spent years trying to convince Washington to stop talking about women’s health as merely a “social” issue, and start talking about it as a fundamental health care issue that affected half the country.
We used every tool in our toolbox to try to beat back the proposal, known as the Stupak Amendment, but we didn’t have the votes, and it was included in the bill passed by the US House of Representatives. If it passed the Senate and became law, it would be a done deal: we’d lose abortion coverage for women and never get it back. I was devastated. That was my lowest point in a long time.
Early the next morning I was in a hotel room, getting ready for a day on the road, when my cell phone rang. My old boss, Nancy Pelosi, was calling. “I know this is terrible, and I’m as mad as you are,” she said. “This was a last-minute attack and just know this: I am committed to getting the Stupak Amendment out of the final bill. I don’t know how, but that’s my word.”
I thanked her and told her we would help however we could. But I wasn’t hopeful. Having worked on the Hill, I knew that the likelihood of our changing the legislation was slim. And deep down I knew that the White House would sign whatever bill came out of Congress. There was no way we could count on the president to veto the bill everyone in his administration had fought so hard for. I felt awful and, frankly, totally discouraged.
A few days later Planned Parenthood leaders from across the country were scheduled to be in Washington for a meeting of the national board. Everyone was expecting an update from the front lines of the health care fight. Our organization had poured all of our energy into supporting Obamacare, and there was so much good in the bill. But I knew we could not support it the way it was. I just hoped the board would agree.
“This is it,” I told them, bracing for a tough conversation. “I am asking you to give me the authority to tell the White House and our congressional leaders that if the bill bans abortion coverage, as it does in its current version, we will lobby against final passage.”
There was an uneasy silence. For months, our volunteers had rallied, made phone calls, and come to Washington to speak to their members of Congress—all in the interest of getting the Affordable Care Act passed. To see those efforts derailed would be awful. I could sense the board members thinking, All this work, for nothing?
The board went back and forth, recognizing that if Planned Parenthood opposed Obamacare over abortion, the entire bill might go down, hurting the millions of Americans in desperate need of affordable health care. I listened as they played out the same internal debate I’d been having for days.
In the middle of their deliberations Reverend Kelvin Sauls, a board member and preacher from California, cleared his throat. He had a forceful voice and was imposing in stature. Everyone in the boardroom stopped their conversations and leaned forward to listen. “The Bible says, ‘And I sought for a man among them, that should stand in the breach before me.’ The question we must answer is, Who will stand in the breach? Who will stand for the women we care for, at a moment of need for moral leadership? I believe this is one of those times when we are called to be in solidarity with women who may have no one else to stand in the breach.”
When he finished speaking, the room erupted with applause. Reverend Sauls had put into words what everyone was feeling. The board voted unanimously that Planned Parenthood would not support legislation that banned abortion coverage—even if that meant the defeat of the very bill we had worked so hard for.
It was my job to deliver the message. First I had to call the White House, knowing that they would be furious. It wasn’t the first time I’d had a big disagreement with the administration, and it wouldn’t be the last, but I had to remember what the president told me and other progressives after he was first elected: “It’s your job to make me do the right thing.” That sounded good as a slogan, but the reality was that no one liked being pressured by us.
Our only real hope was Speaker Pelosi, and though I remembered her pledge to me weeks earlier, her opposing this bill, here at the final hour, seemed nearly impossible. I knew how important health care reform was to her, and to millions of Americans. Our position wasn’t popular enough to upend the entire bill. But I needed to tell her where Planned Parenthood stood, and I needed to tell her directly.
Waiting at the Capitol for my appointment with Nancy, I saw everyone I had ever worked with on the Hill—it was like a slightly awkward family reunion. I was wearing my best blue suit, with Mom’s sheriff badge pin. She was going to have to help me from on high that day.
Being ushered into the conference room was a good reminder of how very different it was to be on the other side of the table from my former boss. This wasn’t a negotiating meeting; I knew I had to be crystal clear on our position, take it or leave it.
“Thanks for coming in today,” Nancy began. “I know you understand we are within only a handful of votes to get this bill passed, and I’m not sure we can get it done. But we are working hard.”
That wasn’t surprising to me, since everyone was hustling votes and it was down to the wire. But before I could reply, she floored me by saying, “You know how much this bill means to me. I’ve worked for health care reform my entire career. But I want you to know: if there is an abortion ban in the Affordable Care Act, there won’t be an Affordable Care Act. I won’t pass it.”
I opened my mouth to thank her, but once again Nancy was a step ahead of me, already strategizing on how to get the caucus in line. Her members were hard at work whipping the votes, and soon we would know whether the abortion ban had made it into the final bill—not to mention whether the bill could even pass.
That whole week was an endless vote-counting effort, and time on the congressional calendar was running out. Soon the voting would be over, for better or worse. We had Planned Parenthood supporters calling every member of Congress, either to buck them up or urge them to support only a bill that protected abortion rights. I was in Washington all week with the Planned Parenthood leadership, holed up in a conference room where we were getting reports from organizers out in the states. Late Friday night the phone rang in my hotel room. It was Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut, a key lieutenant to Speaker Pelosi and one of my favorite members of Congress. We’d been in the trenches together many times, and Rosa had never shied away from a fight.
“Cecile, we did it! We backed them down. They threatened us over and over,” Rosa said. “And it won’t surprise you—several of the Democratic men were ready to sell us out. But Nancy didn’t blink. None of the women blinked. The Stupak abortion ban is out of the bill!”
Joy and relief washed over me, along with an overwhelming feeling of gratitude for the women who had stood with us. It was amazing. Had we really done this?
Yes, we had. Two days later the Affordable Care Act passed, and we made history. Without the women in the House and the Senate, it would have been a different story. Starting with Senator Mikulski, who announced that we were going to war, women in Congress were key to every victory for women under Obamacare. Thanks to their persistence and vision, not only did millions more Americans get health care coverage, but we took on deep injustices that have been part of our health care system for far too long. And of course, they were aided in their efforts by women who spoke out and told their stories, as well as courageous organizers like Sister Simone Campbell and the “Nuns on the Bus,” who helped counter the narrative that supporting women’s health meant going against the Catholic church.
For the first time, insurance companies could no longer charge women more than men for the same health care coverage—something that routinely happened before Obamacare. The many reasons women could be denied insurance coverage, from surviving sexual assault or domestic violence to having had a cesarean section, were no longer valid. And those pesky maternity benefits Senator Kyl objected to became part of the essential benefits all insurance companies have to cover. As Nancy likes to say, thanks to the Affordable Care Act, being a woman is no longer a preexisting condition in America.
Protecting coverage for abortion was a major victory, but certainly not our last battle in the fight for women’s health care. Part of the promise of Obamacare was that under the new law, preventive care would be covered for everyone with no out-of-pocket cost. We thought if we could make a case for contraception as preventive care, maybe women could actually have their birth control covered by insurance, like every other prescription medication in America. After all, Viagra was fully covered, so why not birth control? Planned Parenthood saw more than 2 million patients for birth control each year, but what we were talking about could be life-changing for tens of millions of women. The stakes went far beyond just our clinics, and the potential impact was huge.
There are three things to know about birth control. First, it’s incredibly popular; more than 90 percent of women will use it at some point. There’s a statistic I use all the time from Guttmacher, which does excellent research on reproductive health: the average woman in America who wants kids spends five years pregnant or trying to conceive, and thirty years trying not to. In other words, this is a lifetime of medical care that people need, and that’s a lot of birth control. Second, too often women don’t use the birth control method that’s best for them because they can’t afford it—think about an IUD, which is really cost-effective over the long term but comes with an up-front cost. Third, a lot of people (58 percent of women using birth control, to be precise) rely on it at least in part for reasons other than preventing pregnancy, such as treating endometriosis, acne, or cramps. Others use it because they want to be able to have sex and not get pregnant—also a compelling reason! The bottom line? Birth control is basic health care for millions of people.
That might seem logical enough, but we knew from experience that getting a majority of legislators on our side was going to be a massive battle. We were fresh off a fight against laws that would let pharmacists refuse to fill a woman’s birth control prescription, and we weren’t about to take anything for granted. We needed both the medical and scientific community and the general public to stand with us like never before.
Unsurprisingly, the public debate over birth control was Exhibit A in how little many of the men making decisions about health care legislation know about women’s health. It was a revelation to them that birth control could be anything other than a pack of pills or a condom. Men, including supporters of Planned Parenthood, had no idea how many women use birth control. That shouldn’t have come as a surprise. A Fox newscaster once said that women didn’t need Planned Parenthood because they could go to Walgreens for their pap smears. That kerfuffle caused Walgreens to put out a statement telling women not to come to their stores expecting a pap smear. God bless Stephen Colbert, who was on it instantly, saying that women should go to Walgreens and look for the stirrups, right between the cat food and Swiffer refills. Clearly this was a teachable moment.
One of our more successful lobbying visits at that time was with Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader from Nevada. We brought a group of women athletes from the University of Nevada–Las Vegas to see the senator, who had been a competitive boxer. They explained that they use birth control to regulate their menstrual cycle during the season, which improved their performance—a story he was eager to repeat the next time he saw me. “I met these incredible women athletes from UNLV,” he said. “Did you know they need birth control to compete?”
“Well, yes, I did know that, Senator Reid, and thank you for meeting with them,” I answered. Meanwhile I was thinking, It was really worth it to bring these young women to Washington. They’re more effective than any paid lobbyist in town.
We had the public on our side, the optics on our side, and the science on our side. But as with so many other women’s health issues, the decision was ultimately a political one. Despite the shenanigans in Congress, it was the administration that would make the call. We had supporters in the White House, but we also had some very high-ranking opponents.
The most organized force against us was, again, the Conference of Catholic Bishops, who understood that offering no-copay birth control for the first time would be a really big deal. While most of our organizing was highly public, theirs was primarily behind the scenes. We would show up at the White House, only to realize that the Bishops had been there before us, arguing that birth control was immoral—though the fact is that a huge majority of Catholic women use it.
So we turned up the heat. Members of the US Senate, led by Patty Murray and Richard Blumenthal, demanded to talk to the White House. Activists flooded the administration with letters in support of the birth control benefit. The mother of a Planned Parenthood staff member came up with the idea of sewing a human-size, wearable birth control pill pack. We named the costume “Pillamena,” and it made the rounds on college campuses. We were throwing in everything but the kitchen sink.
One morning in February 2012, I was sitting in our office in Washington, wondering if all our efforts would be enough. I got a text message from a friend in the administration, saying, “Don’t be surprised if you get a call from the White House today.” That meant good news or bad news, but I didn’t know which.
A few hours later, sure enough, my phone rang. The woman on the other end said, “Would you please hold for the president of the United States?”
“I can definitely do that,” I said, thinking, This is the first time in my life I’ve gotten a call from the president of the United States. Whatever he says, at least I’ll always have that!
A minute later President Obama—who is notorious for being on time—came to the phone. “Hey, Cecile, how’s it going?” he asked in a cheerful voice.
“Well, hello, Mr. President. It’s going just fine, thanks.”
“Cecile, I wanted to call you because I’m making three phone calls today: the Catholic Bishops, the Catholic Hospital Association, and you. Suffice it to say, I think yours is going to be the happiest phone call I’m going to make.”
At that point I started feeling hopeful.
“I’m going to tell them the same thing I’m telling you: later today, I’m going to announce at the White House that, from here on out, birth control is going to be covered for all women under their insurance plans with no copay. I know you’ve worked hard for this, and I think it’s going to be a huge advance for women.”
I took a deep breath. “Well, Mr. President, thank you for calling me yourself, and for understanding what a difference this is going to make. We’re going to be busy making sure women know about this benefit and can get it.”
Later, the entire staff gathered around a television in a conference room to watch as the president took the podium in the White House press briefing room. “As part of the health care reform law that I signed last year,” he announced, “all insurance plans are required to cover preventive care at no cost. That means free checkups, free mammograms, immunizations, and other basic services. We fought for this because it saves lives and it saves money. . . . We also accepted a recommendation from the experts at the Institute of Medicine that when it comes to women, preventive care should include coverage of contraceptive services such as birth control.”
We let out a cheer as he went on: “Whether you’re a teacher, or a small businesswoman, or a nurse, or a janitor, no woman’s health should depend on who she is or where she works or how much money she makes. Every woman should be in control of the decisions that affect her own health. Period.”
It was a phenomenal moment, surrounded by Planned Parenthood staff that had spent months organizing, tweeting, writing reports, and gathering the stories of women across the country. We hugged, high-fived, and took it all in for a few minutes. Then we started strategizing about what we needed to do to make sure no-copay birth control was a rousing success.
And it was. As soon as the birth control benefit took effect, women started walking into pharmacies to refill their prescriptions, walking out with another month’s supply of birth control with no out-of-pocket cost. They’d go to check out at the doctor’s office after a well-woman exam, ask what they owed, and hear the receptionist say, “The total for your visit is zero dollars.” Women started sending Planned Parenthood thank-you notes written on the back of a Walgreens receipt, with the copay circled: $0.00.
Here’s the headline: In the first year alone, women saved $1.4 billion on birth control pills. Today we’re at a thirty-year low for unintended pregnancy, a historic low in teen pregnancy, and the lowest abortion rate since Roe v. Wade. These facts are too often overlooked, even though this is one of the biggest public health success stories of the last century. It didn’t happen on its own—it happened in large part due to better and more affordable access to birth control.
But of course elections have consequences. Since President Obama left office, women’s health has come under fire by the Trump administration, which believes insurance companies shouldn’t have to cover birth control. While the Obama administration was full of people—including the president himself—who were aware of how many women rely on affordable contraceptives, the current administration is home to high-ranking officials who claim birth control doesn’t work and don’t think it should have to be covered by insurance.
• • •
At a time when so many people’s opinions on issues of reproductive health seem to be set in stone, it can seem nearly impossible to change someone’s mind. By refusing to back down on birth control coverage in the Affordable Care Act, we certainly changed the way a lot of people understood birth control. Many of the men who once rolled their eyes when they talked about it were persuaded by the many women from all walks of life who felt so strongly about making their own health care choices.
There is a takeaway here for aspiring hell-raisers: We get only what we’re willing to fight for—nothing more and, I hope, nothing less. That’s a lesson I learned growing up in Texas. During the summer of 2013 the rest of the country learned a little something about it too.
It started when Governor Rick Perry and the legislature shut down the state women’s health program in an effort to get rid of Planned Parenthood in Texas. More than eighty health centers shuttered or stopped providing family planning services, the vast majority of which were not even Planned Parenthood. All were health care providers that delivered basic health care to the most underserved Texans.
Then, after slashing family planning, Governor Perry and the legislature called a special session and tried to force through the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. The measures they were trying to pass would force all but five of the remaining abortion clinics left in the state to close their doors. In a state the size of Texas, that’s a really big deal—thousands of women would not have a single abortion provider within hundreds of miles. The politicians’ goal was clear: to end access to safe and legal abortion altogether.
By that point, women in Texas had been so beat down that the governor and his friends must have thought they would be too exhausted to fight back. Instead it was like a match on dry kindling. Suddenly Texans from every corner of the state were showing up to testify against the bill. Parents left kids with neighbors and headed to the capitol. Students from Texas A&M in College Station, Texas Tech in Lubbock, and every college in between drove to Austin to stand in line for the chance to get their three minutes before the Texas Senate. Hundreds of activists waited for hours, some until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. People in California and Wisconsin watching on social media ordered pizza and coffee to be delivered to protesters at the capitol.
Legislation terrible for women was being debated in states across the country, but Texas was clearly in a class all its own. I told Dawn Laguens, “We really ought to figure out how to provide more support down there. I’ve been doing this work a long time, but I’ve never seen spontaneous organizing like this.”
I was on a train on my way back to New York from a Planned Parenthood event when I got a call from Kirk Watson, the former mayor of Austin, a longtime friend, and now a state senator and head of the Democratic caucus. “Look, this bill’s happening,” he told me. “I know we don’t have the votes to block it. We can’t win. But I think we can filibuster the bill. This is our chance to say something.”
To filibuster, a state senator would have to talk until they ran out the clock. And the Democrats had someone lined up to do it: Senator Wendy Davis from Fort Worth. I had met Wendy and knew she was tough and fearless. I’d heard her speak, and she had real star power.
“Wow,” I said. “Okay. I’ll see how quickly I can get there.”
When I landed in Austin I headed to Steve and Amber Mostyn’s apartment to meet up with Wendy. Steve and Amber were progressive warriors. They knew everything about the workings of the state legislature and were always up for a good social justice fight. Yvonne Gutierrez, a brilliant and tireless Planned Parenthood leader from San Antonio, was there too, helping to compile facts about Planned Parenthood and stories of patients from across the state. The fact that Wendy was willing to filibuster and speak openly about abortion, and that her senate colleagues were committed to supporting her, was momentous.
The next morning I headed to the capitol with Yvonne to wish Wendy good luck. She was lacing up her now famous pink running shoes, and I could see it in her eyes: she was definitely ready. On the front door of her office she’d hung a sign reading Stand with Planned Parenthood. “I want to make sure every senator has to walk by this sign on their way to the floor,” she explained.
The energy in Austin that day was like nothing I’d ever experienced. Normally the capitol is pretty empty except for the people who work there and the occasional tour group of schoolkids. But on this day the line to get into the senate to watch Wendy’s filibuster snaked up three stories of the capitol rotunda, and every overflow room was full to capacity. The “Stand with Texas Women” coalition had ordered hundreds of T-shirts in the only color you can get in such huge quantities in Texas at a moment’s notice: burnt orange, the color of nearby University of Texas. As a result, the entire place was a sea of orange, and the marching orders for our side became: “Come early, stay late, wear orange.”
As I walked around, taking it all in, I met a seven-year-old activist named Scarlett who had set up shop in a corner of the capitol, where she was decorating and distributing homemade pins that said, “Stand with Wendy.” I still have mine. Everywhere I went, I ran into activists, members of the state legislature, and people who had worked on Mom’s campaign, along with brand-new activists who had never set foot in the capitol. And everyone had brought their kids.
At 11:18 a.m. the filibuster started. Wendy stood up, her posture strong and defiant, and said, “I intend to speak for an extended length of time.” She read facts about abortion, testimony from Planned Parenthood doctors and patients. Every time I started to worry she might be losing steam, she launched into another powerful personal account from yet another woman in Texas. In order to defeat the bill, she would have to filibuster until midnight—no breaks, no rest.
As she continued into the afternoon and then the night, we knew the eyes of Texas were upon us; we didn’t know that hundreds of thousands of people outside the state and around the world were also watching it all unfold.
I was getting texts from people all over the country who were glued to their computer screens. A young social studies teacher named Christopher Dido was streaming the chanting and cheering in the rotunda from his cell phone. Every now and then he would hold the phone in front of his face, selfie-style, and ask, “Do you guys want me to keep streaming, or have you had enough?” Thousands of comments would roll in from around the world: “Keep going!”
At one point even Barack Obama tweeted to a cool 41 million followers, “Something special is happening in Austin tonight.” Someone read the tweet out loud in the rotunda; it was a real morale boost, and possibly the one time in recorded history a president’s late-night tweet actually did some good.
While we were trying to manage the chaos outside the senate gallery, senate staffers were sending us text messages and emails about what was happening inside. Wendy could have only three procedural strikes before senate Republicans could call the filibuster off and pass the bill. She already had two strikes for completely ridiculous matters, and it was clear that Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, who was also president of the senate, intended to stop the filibuster by any means necessary before midnight—even if it meant breaking every rule in the book to do it.
I realized that if they called a third strike on Wendy, the capitol was going to erupt. That’s when I turned to Earl Jordan, the head of security for Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas. He was our go-between with the Texas Department of Public Safety, and an ex-DPS officer himself. Earl has a head of silver hair and would sooner be caught dead than without a tie. He’s a wonderfully mild-mannered guy—the person you’d want by your side in a crisis.
“Earl,” I said, “if they declare the filibuster dead, we’re going to jail tonight. So I need you to get ready.”
Earl didn’t miss a beat. “No, ma’am. No, ma’am, we’re not,” he said in his calm drawl. Translation: Don’t even think about trying something.
I just looked at him. There were thousands of people in the capitol, and it was clear to me that we were going to have massive civil disobedience if they tried to cut Wendy off. And I was convinced that was what we needed. No one was going to be able to change my mind, not even Earl.
I began to look around the rotunda for lawyers I knew, quickly spying the veteran civil rights attorney Malcolm Greenstein. I also texted Rick Levy, a friend from our Tyler days, and asked if he could be on call in case we all went to jail. Then I turned to the women on either side of me. “Now might be a good time to put your ID in your bra. That way you’ll have it if we get arrested later.” I’d learned a few things since my first arrest back in California.
Meanwhile, inside the chambers, Republicans had not only stopped Wendy’s filibuster and tried to call a vote, they had cut off the microphones on the Democratic side. It was complete chaos when Senator Leticia Van de Putte, who had hastily come back from her father’s funeral in San Antonio earlier that day to be part of the fight, stood up and declared, “At what point must a female senator raise her hand or raise her voice to be recognized by her male colleagues?” She was speaking to the frustrations of women across Texas whose voices had been shut out for far too long.
I was standing out in the rotunda, surrounded by people chanting, by cameras clicking, and by Planned Parenthood staff juggling phones. Yvonne and I were trading information back and forth, along with Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas CEO Ken Lambrecht, when I got a text message from someone on the senate floor. It just said, “Make noise.”
And so we did. We shook the capitol to its foundation. We knew that our last hope of stopping the bill before midnight was to create so much raucous noise and chaos that they couldn’t continue with business as usual. The lieutenant governor called us an “unruly mob.” Funny—in some parts of the world, they call that democracy in action.
We continued to rally well past midnight. The Department of Public Safety threw everyone out of the senate gallery, but nobody left the capitol. At one point they even tried to change the clock on the senate floor to make it look like they had passed the bill in time. The Republicans were trying to claim the filibuster had failed.
Finally, around 3:00 a.m., Ken got a text message from Wendy. As he read it, his eyes widened. Grinning, he handed me his phone so I could read it for myself—and then shout it at the top of my lungs to the crowd. It said: “First, I love you guys. The lieutenant governor has agreed that SB 5 is dead.”
In the midst of the deafening applause, Ken grabbed my hand, leaned in, and said, “This is why we do what we do.” Someone started to sing “The Eyes of Texas,” and everyone joined in. I kept looking up at Mom’s portrait in the rotunda. She ran for governor to open up the doors of government and let the people in, and here we were. She would have been so proud. There was nothing she loved better than making good trouble.
I had to make a plane back to New York at daybreak, but it was 4:00 a.m. and I was starving, so Earl and I drove to the only place open for breakfast at that hour. As we walked into the Magnolia Café on South Congress, the booths were filled with fellow protesters wearing Planned Parenthood pins and T-shirts reading “What Would Tami Taylor do?,” in reference to Connie Britton’s legendary Friday Night Lights character. Earl and I wedged in with the rest of the protesters and celebrated with a stack of pancakes.
• • •
It didn’t take long before we got the news that Governor Perry had called a second special session to pass the bill. We knew it was coming, and we knew we had to keep people organized and our fight in the news. So we got to work, planning a statewide bus tour. We wanted to make sure this wasn’t just an Austin story, but a story about what was happening to women across the state. On my way back to Texas from New York, I passed a store window displaying a burnt orange dress—the color everyone was wearing at the capitol. I ran in and bought it. That orange dress would be my uniform for the next several days.
We kicked off with a rally on the steps of the capitol, the likes of which no one had seen since Mom’s days as governor. Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks came from Lubbock with her father, Lloyd, who was a singer-songwriter and one of the first people to be inducted into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame. We all had goose bumps when she sang “Not Ready to Make Nice.”
The next day we headed out on orange buses emblazoned with “Stand with Texas Women.” The two buses (nicknamed “Ann” after Mom and “Maggie” after Margaret Sanger) crisscrossed the state, greeted by crowds in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and even in smaller, more conservative towns like Midland in West Texas. Everywhere she went, Wendy Davis got a hero’s welcome. Women would walk up to me with tears in their eyes and share deeply personal stories about ending a pregnancy while struggling to comply with medically unnecessary laws intended to shame them. No matter the outcome of our fight, they were determined to stand up and be counted.
Days later, when the bill came up for a vote, we didn’t have the votes to block it, nor could we filibuster again. Even so, people were still showing up in droves.
Walking up the steps to the capitol that morning, feeling somber but determined, I passed a mother and her young son. The mom elbowed him, saying, “Show her your sign.” He held up a piece of orange tagboard on which he had written in Magic Marker, “I still have my mom thanks to cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood.” His mother started to cry and said simply, “Thank you.” I gave them both a hug and went into the capitol.
As usual everyone had to go through security. But this time there was a rumor floating around that the Department of Public Safety was confiscating women’s tampons and sanitary napkins, apparently worried that the women would throw them from the gallery onto the senate floor. Senator Kirk Watson quipped, “I’m really confused—I thought sanitary napkins were kind of soft, fluffy things.” It was irony at its finest: you could bring a gun into the state capitol, but not a tampon.
Things did feel different that night, as though everyone were saying goodbye. I ran into Jessica Farrar, a member of the Texas House of Representatives who had been an organizing powerhouse since the beginning of this legislative fight. She was walking around in her shorts and a tie-dyed T-shirt. When I saw her coming, I started clapping, and so did everybody else.
That night, after the bill passed, hundreds of people were waiting outside the capitol, including my husband, who had flown in to help. We requisitioned a bullhorn and held an impromptu rally, with Wendy, Kirk Watson, and many other senators who had led the fight. But the evening wasn’t complete until we marched past the governor’s mansion carrying a sign that read, “In it for the long run!”
That night I couldn’t sleep. All I could think of were the people we’d met and the makeshift family we had built. There were activists of all ages who had been part of this—including one of my favorites, Beau Guidry. At nine years old, Beau had not only watched every minute of Wendy Davis’s filibuster, but he had live-tweeted it. Later that fall he would run for president of his third grade class—and win.
On my flight home the next morning I met two young women, one in a bachelorette tiara. They had flown into Austin on Friday night for a party with the bridesmaids, but ended up moving the festivities to the capitol on Saturday to be part of the protests. I was sure that they and Beau and all the others would be in it for the long run as well.
And of course, it was the filibuster and all the organizing that went into it that led to Wendy’s race for governor. She became a national leader for reproductive rights, and that never would have happened if not for everything that summer. We’d woken up a sleeping giant in Texas.
• • •
The best and worst part about being a professional troublemaker is that the trouble never ends. Once the law we’d been protesting took effect, we had to continue fighting back while making sure women could still get abortions in Texas, despite the unbelievable barriers they faced. And we had to make damn sure we told these women’s stories—with the help of health care researchers, women’s magazines, the Texas Tribune and Texas Observer, and many others.
While health care providers had been racing to get ready for the laws, women were whipsawed when the changes took effect. Women who were scheduled to have an abortion on Friday morning showed up and found out it had been canceled. One woman who came to Planned Parenthood was stricken. “What do you mean, I have to come back? I can’t. I’ve left my kids with my neighbor and can’t miss another day of work.” She left, sobbing, and never returned.
One of the many heroines from those awful days is Melaney Linton, a Planned Parenthood CEO who oversees parts of Texas and Louisiana. The day after the laws took effect, and other abortion providers were forced to close their doors, Melaney reported that her staff was working around the clock to be there for the flood of patients who filled their waiting room, lobby, patio, hallway, and parking lot. “We are still providing services,” she said. “We will never, ever go down without a fight.”
We knew the case would eventually make its way to the Supreme Court, and with the help of Whole Woman’s Health and the Center for Reproductive Rights, it did. But we also knew our chances of winning were uncertain. The day of the argument, the gathering in front of the Supreme Court was massive. Reproductive rights and justice leaders, allies from the labor movement, and more gathered to cheer on the Center for Reproductive Rights attorneys and plaintiffs.
I was honored to be in the courtroom to watch oral arguments before a Court with three women on the bench. In these situations women are always fewer in number but bigger in impact, and it was certainly true that day. Justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts couldn’t get a word in edgewise between Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor.
The irony of that day’s argument? The lawyer for the state of Texas couldn’t give a single reason why enacting these restrictions was for the benefit of women. His only justification was that it was the state’s right to do it. Minutes into the lawyer’s oral argument, Justice Ginsburg set the tone for the hearing by asking how many women lived one hundred miles or more from a clinic under the new law. When he answered that it would be about 25 percent, but that didn’t include women in El Paso, who could go to the clinic just over the border in New Mexico, Justice Ginsburg sat up straighter.
“That’s odd that you point to the New Mexico facility,” she asserted, referring to the fact that New Mexico doesn’t require clinics to meet the onerous and unnecessary requirements Texas claimed were so important to protect women’s health and safety. “If that’s all right for the women in the El Paso area, why isn’t it right for the rest of the women in Texas?” It was a knockout punch.
It wasn’t simply that the women justices dominated the argument and had read every page of the material. They were able to bring something that had seldom been heard before in the Supreme Court: women’s lives and experiences. It was proof that elections matter. Those three women on the Court, twenty-two others in the US Senate, and many more in the US House of Representatives are carrying an entire gender on their shoulders.
Months later, on the day of the verdict, everyone at Planned Parenthood was refreshing ScotusBlog, nervously waiting for the Court to rule. Just after 10:00 a.m. they did. You could hear shouts and cheers making their way around the office as people realized the Supreme Court had ruled 5–3 against the Texas law. Best of all was Justice Ginsburg’s concurring opinion: “It is beyond rational belief that HB 2 could genuinely protect the health of women.” I couldn’t have put it better!
Of course the fight is far from over, and women in Texas are still living with enormous barriers. But not long ago Planned Parenthood started providing abortions again in my hometown of Waco, an important sign of hope and progress.
• • •
Mom used to quote Edna St. Vincent Millay, who said, “It’s not true that life is one damn thing after another; it’s one damn thing over and over.”
Abortion was legalized by the Supreme Court more than four decades ago, and extreme politicians have been chipping away at a woman’s right to make her own health decisions ever since. In fact we’ve seen more attempts in the past five years than ever before to make it harder to access safe and legal abortion. Making matters worse is the appointment of Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, who was one of the first judges to rule on the side of the arts and crafts store Hobby Lobby in a case that allowed employers to deny women access to birth control based on their own personal beliefs. I often think of the signs I see at protests for reproductive rights, typically held by women of a certain age, reading, “My arms are tired from carrying this sign for 40 years.”
But while the fight to keep abortion safe and legal can feel like it’s two steps forward, one step back, there is one area where we’ve made progress no one can take away.
It’s hard to think of a medical procedure in this country that carries the stigma and judgment abortion does. Too often women’s experiences are seen through the lens of cultural and political battles instead of lived experiences. A woman who says she’s relieved after having an abortion is often criticized—though, based on thousands of postabortion interviews, this is overwhelmingly how patients feel. If she says she feels regret, anti-abortion activists may use her words to push for laws that restrict abortion access or treat women as though we are incapable of making our own decisions.
For far too long, intense public debates about abortion had hardly any firsthand experiences at the center of the discussion. That’s changed in recent years, inspired in no small part by women in the reproductive justice movement who refused to be shamed or silenced. More and more, people have come forward to share their experiences.
Four years ago I started speaking more publicly about my own abortion. Before becoming president of Planned Parenthood, I hadn’t talked about it except to family and close friends. The truth is, it wasn’t an agonizing decision for me. It wasn’t tragic or dramatic—it was just my story.
Kirk and I were working more than full time and had three kids in school when I realized I was pregnant again. Like millions of other women, I was using birth control, but no method is foolproof. We were doing the best job we could raising our kids, and I couldn’t imagine we could do justice to a fourth. Having another child just was not an option for us. I already felt like I wasn’t doing enough for Lily, Hannah, and Daniel as it was. I was fortunate in that, at the time, accessing abortion in Texas was not the nightmare it now is for so many women.
Being able to terminate a pregnancy early—it had hardly even begun—was a relief. I realize women have many different feelings about abortion, and I respect that. But the thought that the government could force me or any other woman to carry out a pregnancy that was unplanned or unwanted was and is absolutely unconscionable. Many women have echoed how I feel; nothing makes you firmer in your belief in the right to abortion than being a mother yourself. I look forward to the day when men can empathize with an experience they will never have.
After my public declaration, women came up to me from Arizona to Maine to tell me that they had decided to share their stories, too. I met young women who, inspired by the people and organizations that were addressing abortion stigma, were starting their own campaigns online and in their communities to encourage others to talk about their experiences.
Since then I’ve seen things I never expected: a major party’s presidential nominee talking openly about abortion in a national debate. The actor Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope having an abortion in prime time on the television show Scandal. (Thank you, Shonda Rhimes, for telling women’s stories.) Hundreds of women lawyers even submitted briefs to the Supreme Court in the Texas case telling their own abortion stories.
In 2016 I was at a conference celebrating 125 years of women students at Brown University, my alma mater. I was sitting in the audience, making last-minute edits to my speech, when a middle-aged woman took the stage to introduce me. Something in her voice made me sit up and pay attention.
She thanked Brown and gave a shout-out to her daughter, who was in the audience. Then she started to tell her own story. Days before her graduation in 1968, she traveled to Philadelphia for an illegal abortion. A few days later, barely able to stand, she got out of bed and welcomed her parents to campus. She managed to walk through the Van Wickle Gates to get her diploma, hiding how much pain she was in.
Looking back, she said, she was lucky to be alive. She choked up as she said she would not be where she is today had she not been able to get an abortion. “We can’t ever go back,” she insisted. It was the first time she had ever told her story in public.
We’re still waging the fight for abortion access in America every day. But along the way we’re also transforming the culture, and that change can’t be reversed.
Taking on controversial issues is hard. Since my first weeks at Planned Parenthood, there have been people who have said, “Why don’t you just change the name, or split the organization in two, so people don’t associate you with abortion?” Sometimes these are well-intentioned people; they just want the controversy to go away. But what is important is that we quit apologizing for abortion and do everything we can to support people who need one.
Any time you’re trying to change the way things are or challenge the powers that be, it’s going to be controversial. That’s been true in every organizing job I’ve ever had. Often the work that’s most worthwhile seems the most intractable and impossible. But just because someone else hasn’t figured it out yet doesn’t mean you can’t. After all, if it was easy, someone else would be doing it. And in the meantime, at least I’m enjoying fighting the good fight.