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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