info@consistent-life.org – Finding Alternatives to Planned Parenthood

Finding Groups that Refer to Planned Parenthood: “The Wikipedia Method.”

by Rosalyn Mitchell

During my internship with the Consistent Life Network, I devised and successfully implemented the “Wikipedia Method.” The goal of this project was to identify organizations that refer to the 80 Planned Parenthood Centers known to have health-code violations as determined by official state inspections. These were selected because information on health violations may make referrers more likely to hesitate about referring to those specific centers. This includes referrals for health services, as opposed to abortions, such as Well Women Exams and STD/HIV testing.

While I have covered the 80 centers, there are about 500 more PP centers. The best way to find referrers with this method is for local activists to use it just for the few PP centers in their own locale.

Using Wikipedia, a free online source, one can find information on possible referrers under specific geographic locations.

Target Referrers

Given Planned Parenthood’s marketing appeal to “affordable women’s healthcare,” students are a primary demographic: teenagers and young adults in high school and higher education. This method therefore focuses primarily on educational institutions, including both public and private schools, specifically school districts that manage a cluster of schools. School districts are sometimes headquartered outside of the target geographic region but run schools within the targeted area.

We also focused upon government services, primarily local health departments typically associated with broader municipal management of cities and towns.

While we didn’t focus on health insurance companies and internet directories, we recommend focusing upon them for future projects.

How To

The method of this research is the internet, through Wikipedia, as developed over months of trial and error. Due to the novelty and the broad nature of this project, we decided to focus on web searches. We previously experimented with phone calls and emails as follow-up contact, but found it time-consuming with few responses.

Once you locate a Planned Parenthood center in your area, search the affiliated Wikipedia page by googling the city or town. Usually, the targeted referrers are listed via the “education” or “schools” section.

Check the address of the schools within the school district. For higher education, this method includes colleges both public and private, including community colleges.

Check which county your city or town is run by for health as they sometimes are managed by the regional government.

Beware of geographic inaccuracies in the Wikipedia entry and keep a separate document for “Mistaken Geography” to record any referrers beyond the targeted geographic location.

If you come across federal or international referrals, document them separately. There may be a link to a more comprehensive list via another entry.

Document your results using Microsoft Word or a Google document that’s easy to share. Once opened, copy and paste the clinic address at the top of the page and make two subtitles. The first is for local referrers geographically located in the same place as the target Planned Parenthood center. The second is for regional referees with branches located in the geographic region where the Planned Parenthood centers are. I used the marking of * to link regional referrers with local centers as parent institutions.

Sometimes you may have to use Google to search an institution. Once on their homepage search, “planned parenthood,” the quotations narrow the search, filtering unrelated content. Each report should list all referrals to Planned Parenthood as clear evidence. Copy and paste each link record the website and contact information. Under the “referral portion,” write the search terms and a short description of each reference, as described on their website.

Organizations may refer via external resources created to promote Planned Parenthood. Note this in the report under “External Organizations,” linking to the source’s name, website and document. Not all referrers use external references.

Below is an example of one of my reports. It’s for Austin, TX.

Planned Parenthood – Fort Worth

6464 John Ryan Dr, Fort Worth, TX 76132

Local

Fort Worth Independent School District

Website

https://www.fwisd.org

Contact Info

100 N. University Dr. Fort Worth, TX 76107
Phone 817 814 2000

Referral

Searched on website “Planned Parenthood.”

https://www.fwisd.org/site/Default.aspx?PageType=6&SiteID=4&SearchString=planned%20parenthood

#1
Referred through “Reproductive Health Service Providers” to Planned Parenthood Southeast Fort Worth Health Center address, hours of operation and phone number for reproductive healthcare. Unable access to direct due to denied access linked to search.

#2
https://www.fwisd.org/cms/lib/TX01918778/Centricity/Domain/1006/2016-2017AdoptedProcceduresForReferringStudents.pdf

Referred under “2016-2017 Adopted Procedures for Referring Students to the School” through “Reproductive Health Service Providers” to multiple Planned Parenthood including Southwest Fort Worth Health Center address, hours of operation and phone number for student healthcare.

https://www.fwisd.org/site/Default.aspx?PageType=6&SiteID=4&SearchString=planned%20parenthood

*University of Texas Arlington Fort Worth Campus

Website

https: // fortworth.uta.edu/

Contact Info

1401 S Jones St, Fort Worth, TX 76102, United States
Phone 817-272-5988

Regional

*University of Texas Arlington

Website

https://www.uta.edu/

Contact Info

701 S. Nedderman Drive Arlington, TX 76019
Phone 817 272 2011

Referral

Searched on website “planned parenthood.”

#1
https://www.uta.edu/womens-studies/opportunities.php

Referred under “Women and Gender Studies Department” through “Opportunities” to Planned Parenthood for student internships.

Advice for Activists

Finally, I want to advise local activists about traps to avoid.

Beware of guilt by association. Just because an organization involves itself with Planned Parenthood referrers doesn’t mean they refer themselves. Only list them in the report if there is clear evidence that they refer independently. This includes health departments, as their associated branches may refer while they don’t.

Politics influences geography, with liberal areas being open on average to referring to Planned Parenthood, while conservatives are more hostile. Another aspect is the population, with urban areas on average having more referrals than rural locations. Sometimes you do not find anything; don’t be disheartened, but persevere onwards.

While most websites have search options, some don’t. Save time by being strategic in which tabs you check.

Check health and wellness, resources, student services, internships, educational partnerships, curriculum, equity departments etc.

Beware of defunct organization with signs including websites linking on the internet archive, “Wayback Machine.”

Any religious organization, be it Muslim, Christian, or Jewish, is best avoided as it yields a low rate of return.

Ensure that the referrals are recent. Ignore referrals from over five years ago, as the aim is to stop present referrals.

Finally, age matters, as Planned Parenthood services target post-pubescent bodies making K-8 school unlikely referrers. This work must be exacting in detail to best yield results.

I want to end with encouragement: Change starts with a few dedicated activists like you.

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This blog of the Grassroots Defunding: Finding Alternatives to Planned Parenthood campaign is for activists to share their stories, so we can learn what’s worked well, what hasn’t worked well, what lessons have been learned, and get more ideas for local actions.

See the List of Blog Posts.

If you’d like to share a post, please submit it to grassrootsdefunding@consistent-life.org. Attaching pictures is helpful.

This is a project of the Consistent Life Network. As with our own blog, opinions expressed are those of the writer; we encourage a diversity of views.

Health Violations: Resources to Let Them Know

by Pamela Whitehead, Project Coordinator, Check My Clinic

One of the resources that we at Check My Clinic offer to advocates who go and counsel women in front of the abortion facilities is Check My Clinic signs. These signs would coincide with the violations that you see for that facility on our website.

So the idea is that you would look at the facility where you advocate and you would look at what the violations are. You would choose a sign under our resources tab with printables that coincides with the violation that you see in that facility. Samples:

You send that graphic to your local print shop, and have it printed. I always recommend 36 by 24 because that’s pretty large. It can be seen from the street.

Once you have that sign printed, you would peacefully and silently stand in front of the facility, informing not only those who are entering, but also those who work at the facility. As well as the public driving by. So it’s an awareness campaign.

For places other than the centers themselves, there’s a lot of advantage to getting the information to people before they even show up. The designs can also be used at any rallies like the March for Life or the Women’s March. Especially in 2020, we have a lot of politicians vying for our votes. So those signs could get a lot of traction at a political rally.

In that case you need a sign that was more general rather than saying this clinic has this problem. So we have that. We have a sign that says “Look at this Website – We Dare You.

We also have printable postcards that can be handed out. They can be at a pregnancy center, or they could be at a college campus. You can put those anywhere in a café on a college campus.

On the front of the card it says what you don’t know could hurt you, and then on the back it says an informed woman is an empowered woman. Then it gives the information about what Check My Clinic is and what we offer on the site.

It’s nonjudgmental, it’s informational. What we’re offering is facts. It’s just the facts of what the state has found inside these facilities.

We feel like every woman, every person, every citizen needs to know.

Video version of this post:

Quickly Documenting What PP Offers

by Rachel MacNair, Project Coordinator (816-753-2057)

I took this picture in a bookstore when I was visiting Napa, California. It struck me how it was making its pro-PP point. The breast exams and Pap smears are the forms of cancer screening that PP provides, so that service is double-listed. Note that abortion isn’t mentioned at all.

I mentioned to the bookstore clerk that prenatal services are rarely offered by Planned Parenthood, as mentioned on the bag. Also, they don’t offer mammograms at all. She then actually told me that she had gotten a mammogram herself at PP.

I clarified with her that she meant the PP there in Napa. Then I whipped out my smart phone, googled ‘Planned Parenthood Napa,’ and found the page for that specific clinic.

It showed they do mammogram referrals, not mammograms themselves. And prenatal services weren’t listed at all.

I showed this to the clerk. Her only remark was that I should check with the company. I said this was the company’s website.

This story is an example of how the services PP actually provides can be documented. PP lists the services each individual clinic provides on the individual clinic’s webpage, easily found on PP’s website. No one needs to take our word for it.

You can see for yourself that “prenatal services” is rarely listed. Abortion is practically always listed, either providing them or referring for them.

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See the List of Blog Posts.

If you’d like to share a post, please submit it to grassrootsdefunding@consistent-life.org. Attaching pictures is helpful.

This is a project of the Consistent Life Network. As with our own blog, opinions expressed are those of the writer; we encourage a diversity of views.

The Power of a Promo Card: Defunding Planned Parenthood-Lewisville

by Dianna Lara, Sidewalk Advocate

If you’ve been in the pro-life movement for a long time, you probably know that not every Planned Parenthood clinic is an abortion clinic. But if you’re brand new to the pro-life movement as I was a couple of years ago, you might be surprised to learn that the Planned Parenthood in your neighborhood might not perform abortions at all. These types of clinics that, on one hand, are a part of Planned Parenthood but, on the other hand, don’t perform abortions are what the abortion giant calls, “Family Planning Clinics,” and what pro-lifers often refer to as “abortion-referral clinics” because, despite offering limited gynecological services, one of the impacts of these clinics is to create an abortion pipeline from local neighborhoods to the nearest abortion clinic in their respective regions.

Back in the summer of 2016, I was discerning whether to apply to lead a Sidewalk Advocates for Life location in front of the abortion-referral clinic around the corner from my home or the “real” abortion clinic over 30 miles away. After speaking to veteran pro-lifers, my choice became easy. I heard from pro-life leader after pro-life leader that the abortion-referral clinics are often a woman’s first stop when she first misses a period or when her birth control fails. One pro-life leader from Missouri settled the question for me when she said, “Honey, the referral clinics are where many women make the decision to have an abortion.” So, in August of 2016, I applied to run a Sidewalk Advocates for Life location in front of Lewisville Health Center, an abortion-referral clinic operated by Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas and located less than a mile from my home.

Once my team and I were trained as Sidewalk Advocates and cleared to begin sidewalk advocacy outreach in front of “our” Planned Parenthood, it became clear that we would have some of the same challenges that every Sidewalk Advocate has, as well as a couple of unique ones. Immediately, we set out to find answers to the following questions:

If I were pregnant, scared, and had little money, where (besides Planned Parenthood) could I go in this city for help?

Where is the closest Pregnancy Help Center and is it reliable?

What other support services are available for families facing crisis pregnancies?

In addition to the common questions that every Sidewalk Advocate has to answer, our team had the added challenge of trying to engage in sidewalk advocacy in front of an abortion-referral clinic where client services are varied and often aren’t overtly abortion-related at all. Our Sidewalk Advocates for Life training taught us that our primary activity would probably shift from reaching out solely to abortion-minded women to directing all business (abortion-related or not) away from the local Planned Parenthood clinic to a life-affirming option. As we prepared to launch our outreach in April of 2017, two questions emerged and became dominant:

Who are Planned Parenthood’s closest life-affirming competitors in our city?

How can we best refer clients to them?

Our sidewalk advocacy training had taught us to utilize Community Healthcare Centers, or Federally Qualified Healthcare Centers (FQHCs), and even private OBGYN practices, as alternatives to Planned Parenthood’s limited gynecological services. So, that’s just what we did. We Google-searched “FQHCs near me” and found a network of six clinics located in our county and the neighboring county.

But unfortunately, not one of these clinics was located in our city. The nearest FQHC clinic is 12 miles from Lewisville’s Planned Parenthood. This can be a deal-breaker for a woman who just wants to go a couple of miles down the road for a pregnancy test or STI test.

Even so, we took the steps of introducing ourselves to the FQHC staff as an organization that connects families to affordable healthcare resources, and we gave them a heads up that we might be referring clients to them soon.

With the FQHC not being our strongest option for redirecting women away from Planned Parenthood, my mind immediately turned to potential private practice OBGYNs, and I remembered a positive experience I had with my new personal OBGYN whom I had only visited once before. Unlike every other OBGYN of mine who had strongly encouraged me to use some form of hormonal birth control, this new OBGYN was respectful of my decision to use a Fertility Awareness-Based Method to manage my fertility. Fortunately, as providence would have it, this doctor’s practice was less than a couple of miles up the road from our Planned Parenthood and her building shared a parking lot with our city’s main hospital.

Our first step in forging a partnership with this OGBYN was to schedule a small luncheon with the office staff to introduce ourselves and the purpose of our outreach, which we said was to give women in our area better access to life-affirming healthcare services (this OBGYN does not perform abortions). We presented the doctor and her staff with the opportunity to join in a referral relationship with our sidewalk advocacy group in the form of our LIFE promotion.

Here’s how the LIFE promotion would work:

We would create a business card offering FREE OBGYN services (excluding birth control) for one office visit at the OBGYN’s office. Our non-profit would be sent the invoice for the visit and the costs would be paid by us.

During our sidewalk advocacy outreach, when we would encounter women in need of non-abortive OGBYN services, we would give them the promo card and tell them to make an appointment with our OBGYN partner using the promo code “LIFE.”

Upon arrival for her appointment, the client would trade the promo card for a $25 Visa Gift card which would be given to her by the doctor’s staff (Note: The gift cards would be paid for and provided by our sidewalk advocacy group)

The doctor immediately agreed to participate in the promotion, which was a smart move on her part. After all, we weren’t asking for any discounts. She would receive her normal fee for every client we referred to her and, most importantly, she wouldn’t have to spend any time or money on outreach or marketing to acquire the new patients.

We launched Promo Code LIFE at the beginning of July 2017 and ran the program until the end of June 2018, a total of 12 months.

Here are the outcomes:

Initially, we had 25 promo cards printed via Vistaprint thinking that we would see how quickly (or not) it would take us to give those out and print more if we needed. It took 12 months to give away 25 promo cards.

Out of 25 promo cards given, only 5 were redeemed in that 12-month period

5 promo cards were redeemed for the following services:

o 3 annual exams, including…

o 3 STD tests

o 2 Pregnancy Tests

o 1 emergency IUD removal and ultrasound

Here’s what we learned in the 12 months of our LIFE promotion:

We had a lower than expected redemption rate of 20%.

We were sure that the offer of free OBGYN services plus the promise of a $25 Visa gift card would be enough to ensure that every woman who received a promo card would redeem it. It wasn’t. A conversation I had with one of our clients may reveal a likely reason for the low redemption rate.

Several weeks after giving “R” a promo card during one of our sidewalk advocacy outreach events, she stopped by again for a quick chat. I asked “R” if she had redeemed the promo code and received the long-over-due PAP test she needed (because of HIPPA regulations, the OBGYN could not tell us which women had redeemed the card). She told me that she lost the card and ended up going to Planned Parenthood for her PAP. This was disappointing, to say the least, but it taught us an important lesson.

We missed an opportunity to give women walking into Planned Parenthood an alternative obligation.

In retrospect, instead of merely giving the women the promo card and telling them to make an appointment later, our Sidewalk Advocates should have called the OBGYN with the client there and had the client make the appointment in our presence. As the organization paying for the client’s office visit, it would have been appropriate and reasonable to insist that the client make an appointment on-the-spot as a condition of receiving the promo card. By having the client make an appointment with the OBGYN, we would have given the client an obligation (the appointment) which, as I once heard Dr. Rachel MacNair say, is often hard for a woman to break. Also, by making on-the-spot appointments, we could have used the OBGYN’s office as a natural ally in getting the client to follow through on her appointment. Once the appointment is made, the OBGYN has her own interest in ensuring the client comes in for a visit and would follow up with appointment reminders for the client making it even more likely the client would follow through and redeem the card. (Note: If the client had lost the promo card after making the appointment, the cost of her visit would have still been covered by our program. She would have just forfeited the $25 Visa gift card.)

We took business away from Planned Parenthood…and we’re proud of it!

At the time our promotion ran, Planned Parenthood advertised $158 PAP Tests and $195 STD screenings. Our LIFE promotion took at least $1,000 of business away from Planned Parenthood in the revenue they lost from just the annual exams and STD screenings that were performed at our OBGYN partner instead of their clinic. With regard to pregnancy testing, one woman told us she called Planned Parenthood and asked the price of their pregnancy tests and was told they charge $50 for the pregnancy test and “consultation.” We don’t know the results of the two pregnancy tests our LIFE promotion paid for, but if they were positive, the women would have no doubt been encouraged by the OBGYN to utilize her prenatal services, services which Planned Parenthood in Lewisville doesn’t offer.

Even with the changes that should have been made to our outreach strategy, we consider Promotion LIFE a success simply because it caused Planned Parenthood to lose over $1,000 to its local competitor. In fact, we’re so pleased with the program’s initial success that we’re strongly considering implementing the program again, but incorporating some of the changes discussed above and focusing solely on STI screening.

Other Ideas

If you’re currently running a sidewalk advocacy outreach or contemplating starting one, and you don’t have the money to cover client’s healthcare costs or gift card incentives, don’t worry. You can still make a significant impact in turning clients away from Planned Parenthood.

For example, we recently we called Planned Parenthood-Lewisville to update our price comparison sheet, which we had not updated in over a year. We learned the clinic had increased the price of its STD testing from $195 to $276! In addition to this huge price increase, the representative told us the quote of $276 was just the starting price for STD testing, saying that it could be more depending on “what all the nurse has to do and how long she has to spend with you.” We were flabbergasted. Our OBGYN partner charges a flat rate of $150 for the office visit and $125 for a full-spectrum STD panel for a total of $275. The OBGYN beats Planned Parenthood’s price for STD testing by $1 and gives her clients the peace of mind of knowing exactly what they are going to be asked to pay before services are rendered. Even if we choose not to cover any of the costs of STD testing for our clients in the future, we would still be doing a tremendous service to potential Planned Parenthood clients by letting them know that there’s a board-certified OBGYN just up the road who will most likely charge them less for an STD panel than Planned Parenthood will.

Chances are, if you look hard enough, there’s a healthcare alternative to Planned Parenthood in your local community that is better qualified, more affordable, and doesn’t perform abortions. They just need your help in spotlighting their services to the community. By helping clients find these life-affirming resources before they become pregnant, you can increase the likelihood that they will be encouraged to choose life when they do become pregnant because they are already established with a healthcare facility that doesn’t derive its main source of revenue from abortion.

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See the List of Blog Posts.

If you’d like to share a post, please submit it to grassrootsdefunding@consistent-life.org. Attaching pictures is helpful.

This is a project of the Consistent Life Network. As with our own blog, opinions expressed are those of the writer; we encourage a diversity of views.

Research Parties

by CJ Williams

When organizing to get the actual facts on your local community health centers, one strategy we’ve used is the Research Party.

In New England, we gathered twice in conveniently local cafes with phones and laptops, where we pinpointed all health centers, mapped distances, and made phone calls. To confirm the information we had gleaned from our mobile get-together, we then carpooled or walked to nearby locations to check in-person if our data were correct.

The event is fun — it’s community building. It’s easy to add info quickly and smoothly to a joint google document, and share with everyone involved or in the region, and easy to cover a lot of ground fast and effectively when carpooling or walking together. An added benefit to this rubric for research is that everyone involved gets a feel for distances, ease of access, and other details necessary to mapping alternatives to Planned Parenthood in this project.

Mariana, researching mileage between New Hampshire CHCs and local PP

Using the google document also makes filling out the website’s Google Form easy, and it’s a simple thing to plug in additional notes on Planned Parenthood’s policies and hours in the area as well.

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See the List of Blog Posts.

If you’d like to share a post, please submit it to grassrootsdefunding@consistent-life.org. Attaching pictures is helpful.

This is a project of the Consistent Life Network. As with our own blog, opinions expressed are those of the writer; we encourage a diversity of views.