Planned Parenthood CEO won't negotiate with 'bullies'

[lostincalifornia]

Planned Parenthood CEO Alexis McGill Johnson spoke with allies in Congress this week to chart a path forward for reproductive rights, Medicaid coverage, and the organization’s imperiled funding, she told STAT on Thursday.

The future of those issues may be a bit brighter as the group looks toward the midterms, McGill Johnson said, while arguing America’s health care system is “in crisis.”

Planned Parenthood in particular has had a bruising few years — which included the rollback of federal abortion rights and attempts to defund the organization.

But McGill Johnson said the group isn’t changing its messaging in Washington, and she’s not interested in working with GOP leaders who have the group in their crosshairs.

https://www.statnews.com/2026/01/23/health-news-planned-parenthood-abortion-midterm-elections/


“Tyranny plays on fear,” she said. “But fear collapses when we organize together.” — Daniel Payne

[WhiskeyGrinder]

1. No, it kinda tends to give up in advance.

https://www.thecut.com/article/planned-parenthood-federally-defunded-facing-a-crisis.html

When the Dobbs decision finally came down in the summer of 2022, many shield-law activists were surprised to learn — from lawmakers — that in several states, including New York, Planned Parenthood did not support the shield laws covering telemedicine, a position that was never formally announced and was initially invisible to the public. Planned Parenthood wasn’t alone in its opposition — in New York State, it was joined by the other dominant players in reproductive rights: the New York Civil Liberties Union, the National Institute of Reproductive Health, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists — but Planned Parenthood was the most influential. When activists confronted Planned Parenthood leadership, one told me, “They tried to pretend that they just had questions. They would say, ‘This is an untested strategy — we don’t think this is a good law. We don’t think we should stick our necks out for something that we don’t think would work.’”

A person involved in advocating for the shield laws in New York said that the state’s Planned Parenthood affiliates had their own legislative wish list, which included passing the long-delayed Equal Rights Amendment, and wanted lawmakers focused on their priorities. Others who lobbied for the shield laws said they’d suspected from the start that Planned Parenthood’s opposition was driven by concerns over its own survival: The laws would effectively support low-overhead online clinics that could siphon away patients. “I get it,” said one lawyer who worked on shield laws. “These are business entities, and they need to be able to pay their employees and pay their rent. And if you’re a place that can just ship pills anywhere in the country from your living room, you’re going to be able to undercut the prices of a Planned Parenthood or an indie brick-and-mortar clinic.” The New York state advocacy arm of the organization called this claim “completely untrue,” saying “We have a strong record of supporting policy efforts that expand access to sexual and reproductive health care — regardless of where that care takes place.”

In June 2022, New York legislators passed a shield law that protected doctors who performed in-person abortions on ban-state patients but did not mention telehealth. In the next legislative session, a handful of advocates and a new coalition, including the Center for Reproductive Rights and smaller organizations, banded together. “We said, ‘Okay, we are willing to take the risk so just get out of our way,’” one of the shield-law advocates told me. “‘It’s not on you. It’s on us. So let us do this.’”

When it became clear that a new, more comprehensive law would pass protecting telehealth provision, Planned Parenthood issued a statement supporting it. The groups that had worked to make it happen saw the move as face-saving; Planned Parenthood didn’t want its name missing from a major success in expanding abortion access. “We could have passed it in that first session after Roe fell,” the same advocate said bitterly. Adding insult to injury, they said, a Planned Parenthood representative “showed up at the bill-signing ceremony as if they’d been there all along.” (In a comment, the state advocacy arm denied that it had worked against the shield laws and said that it had “contributed to informing the legislation.”)