The Daily - The Fight Over Planned Parenthood’s Future

Episode Date: July 23, 2019

Dr. Leana Wen, the first physician to lead Planned Parenthood in decades, was ousted after just eight months on the job. Her departure highlights a central tension over the direction of the group: Is it a political organization first, or a health organization? Guest: Sarah Kliff, an investigative reporter for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: As states began to pass ever more restrictive laws on abortion, Planned Parenthood’s leaders felt they needed a more aggressive political leader to fight efforts to roll back abortion access.“I was asked to leave for the same reason I was hired: I was changing the direction of Planned Parenthood,” Dr. Wen wrote in an Op-Ed for The Times.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. After just eight months on the job, the head of Planned Parenthood has been forced out. What her departure reveals about what the organization thinks it can and cannot be in this moment.

It's Tuesday, July 23rd. Congratulations on making your daily debut. Thank you. I'm excited. It's going to be great. I hope so. It will be. Of course it's going to be great. I hope so. It will be. Of course it's going to be great. We don't really have a choice. We only make one episode a day.

Okay. Everybody good? Sarah Cliff writes about health care for The Times. Sarah, how did the head of Planned Parenthood explain her decision to resign? So last week, Dr. Lena Nguyen posted a two-paragraph statement where she said, I am leaving because the new board chairs and I have philosophical differences over the direction and the future of Planned Parenthood. And what is she talking about?

So this was really a difference about who Planned Parenthood is. Are they a major advocate for abortion rights who are going to be fighting all these bans on abortion that we're seeing? Or are they primarily a chain of 600 health clinics that are filling in the safety net of the United States? So are they a health care organization or an abortion rights advocacy group? Or are they both? Right.

And I think a core question is, do they, at this particular moment for abortion rights in America, do they have the luxury of choosing to be one or the other? Or do they have to be two really different things at the exact same time? So how does Dr. Lina Nguyen fit into that tension? What is her story prior to coming to Planned Parenthood? She is a doctor and a healthcare professional by training. She is someone who is showing up on all these lists of rising stars in healthcare, an influential person, and she has a really impressive resume. Becoming a doctor was my dream. When I was eight,

my parents and I moved to the U.S., and ours became the typical immigrant narrative. My parents cleaned hotel rooms and washed dishes and pumped gas so that I could pursue my dream. Well, eventually, I learned enough English. She finished college when she was 18. And my parents were so happy the day that I got into medical school and took my oath of healing and service. She became health commissioner of Baltimore when she was 35. She gave this really widely watched TED Talk about the things doctors don't tell you. We're scared of patients finding out who we are and what medicine is all about.

And so what do we do? We put on our white coats and we hide behind them. And in Baltimore, she was really known for having innovative policies. One of the things I knew her for best at the time was she wrote a blanket prescription for the entire city for naloxone, this opioid overdose reversal drug, and that was seen as something different and big. Dr. Wen said so far 531 people have been saved from an overdose with naloxone. Dr. Wen said people with substance abuse problems deserve compassion and respect, and it is important to provide the public with the skills to use naloxone to save lives.

And so what in particular about that resume was appealing to Planned Parenthood? Well, I think it represents a big shift for Planned Parenthood. Before Dr. Wen, for more than 10 years, they'd been led by Cecile Richards, who comes from a very different background. For the majority of people in this country, Planned Parenthood is not the problem. We're the solution. From a background that is purely politics, her mother is Ann Richards, the former governor of Texas, outspoken abortion advocate. Cecile worked on the Hill for Nancy Pelosi before taking her position with Planned Parenthood. So the last president, Cecile Richards, was first an activist. Dr. Wen came in first as a doctor. She comes in at a moment when Planned Parenthood is tied to the fight over abortion rights

in ways that it hasn't been before. The need for a permanent government-wide prohibition on taxpayer funding for abortion has probably never been more important. Over the past decade, really tracing back to 2011, there has been this growing fight over defunding Planned Parenthood. I also think now is the time to end taxpayer funding not only for abortion, but also for abortion providers. I also think now is the time to end taxpayer funding not only for abortion, but also for abortion providers. The idea really comes up when then-Congressman Mike Pence, now Vice President Mike Pence, introduces his first bill to defund Planned Parenthood in 2011. Abortion is a heartbreaking billion-dollar industry that mostly benefits Planned Parenthood. And I believe the time has come for that to end. And it snowballs.

The American people do not want federally funded abortions. So you see in 2011, the House votes to defund Planned Parenthood. Federal funding of abortion will lead to more abortions. In 2015, the House and the Senate vote to defund Planned Parenthood, but President Obama vetoes it. Democrats are ready to sit down and negotiate with Republicans right now. But it should be over legitimate issues, like how much do we invest in education, job training, and infrastructure, not unrelated ideological issues like Planned Parenthood. In 2016, Republicans add language about defunding Planned Parenthood to their official party platform for the first time.

I'd like to see Roe versus Wade overturned and consigned to the ash heap of history. So this is growing, and Planned Parenthood is becoming a more political organization because they're under more political attack. Hillary Clinton has demonstrated time and time again she's tough, she's ready for the job day one. They endorse a candidate for the first time in their hundred-year history during a primary. Some news just coming across right now from the Supreme Court. We have just learned that Justice Anthony Kennedy will be retiring. Then you have Justice Kennedy announcing his resignation, and all of a sudden, that's a huge question mark for the future of abortion rights in the United States.

You are going to see 20 states pass laws banning abortion outright, just banning abortion, because they know that there are now going to be five votes on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. And it's just five days after Justice Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings, hearings that focus really heavily on the future of abortion rights. That's when you have Dr. Lena Nguyen announced as the new president of Planned Parenthood. So what does the beginning of her tenure look like, given everything you've just laid out? It starts off pretty rocky, and not

necessarily in ways that relate to abortion. There's this one incident that came up a lot in the reporting my colleague Shane Goldmacher and I were doing, where Dr. Wen, on her first day as Planned Parenthood president, she had this interview run in the magazine Elle, where she talks about her history and her excitement about being president of Planned Parenthood. And one of the things she does there is describe undocumented workers as illegal immigrants. This upsets some people at Planned Parenthood. At a progressive organization, they kind of reject the idea that anyone could be illegal. And it comes up in a staff meeting that happens a few months later, where a young worker kind of confronts Dr. Wen about it, says, this makes it hard for me to organize. We serve people who are undocumented. I'd prefer if you

didn't use that language. And according to our reporting, she essentially says, I'm not going to apologize for that. So really early on, you're starting to see these signs of tension between Dr. Wen and the organization she has just started running. You also start seeing some tension around things that are related to abortion and are related to Planned Parenthood's role as an abortion provider. One of these is a debate about the Planned Parenthood website. Very early on, Dr. Wen suggests adding a bunch of new pages, health information pages, to the main Planned Parenthood website. These would be about things like the common cold, smoking, diabetes, emergency preparedness,

not really, you know, what you think of when you think of Planned Parenthood. And I ended up seeing some internal emails where this starts to worry the Planned Parenthood staff. They start saying, wait a minute, you know, why does Planned Parenthood, when we typically don't treat the common cold, why would we have information about this on our website? And, you know, there's one email that kind of puts the question bluntly, where a Planned Parenthood staff member writes, you know, are we the nation's largest sexual and reproductive health provider, or are we something different? So longtime staff are feeling pretty uneasy about her pretty much from the get-go. Yes, and they start to leave. So you start seeing some pretty senior folks,

folks who had worked on political organizing for Planned Parenthood, leave the organization. Meanwhile, you're starting to see this wave of really restrictive abortion bans that start very early in pregnancy. The first one is in Indiana in April. Lawmakers like those here in Indiana keep churning out measure after measure to limit abortion, and they keep getting challenged in court. Quickly followed by Georgia. The bill makes abortions illegal once a heartbeat is detected in the embryo. Ohio.

The law bans abortions once a doctor detects a fetal heartbeat. Alabama. In Alabama, they're looking to just have a total abortion ban in this state. Missouri. Missouri's governor signing a law today banning the procedure after eight weeks of pregnancy. Mississippi. The law does not make exceptions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest. They just keep passing.

This year alone, 13 other states have introduced or advanced similar legislation. Thirteen other states have introduced or advanced similar legislation. And what is Dr. Wen's response to these state laws? So there is an expectation they are going to fight for their lives. They are fighting for their clinic's ability to exist in the United States. And there are campaigns. You know, Dr. Wen is on television talking about abortion rights. This is not a warning. It's not a drill. It's not hypothetical. We could face a situation tomorrow where 1.1 million women of reproductive age in Missouri will no longer be able to access abortion care,

which is essential health care in their own state, and have to drive hundreds of miles round trip to Kansas, to Illinois, just to get health care. And I think it needs to be said that this is a real public health crisis. There's a campaign called Bans Off My Body. This is my body, my life, my voice, my truth, my future, my decisions. But there's a sense in the community that it's not enough. You know, when you look at, for example, the keynote that Dr. Wen gave at Planned Parenthood's annual conference, it was about expanding into new health care services. It was talking about we're going to, you know, help treat the opioid epidemic and we're going to help fight for more mental health coverage. And I don't think folks at Planned Parenthood necessarily opposed treating opioid addiction and opposed treating mental health issues. But they felt like at this particular moment, the thing we need to focus on is making sure that we have clinics where we can do those things. And we are dangerously close to losing those clinics.

Well, Sarah, why is that? What is Dr. Wen's argument for not fighting Republicans as her colleagues and those in the abortion rights movement want her to at this moment? She thinks the right strategy is to depoliticize Planned Parenthood, to make it this like bigger tent organization where they talk about all the health care stuff they do that isn't abortion. What is your idea of what Planned Parenthood is supposed to be doing in this country? Planned Parenthood is a health care organization. That's how I got to know Planned Parenthood. My mother was a patient of Planned Parenthood, so was my sister, and so was I.

And you see this in a lot of the work she did. One of the first major campaigns they run is called This Is Health Care. Her vision for Planned Parenthood's success is that they're going to talk about all the different services they do. They're going to find common ground with people who might not support abortion rights, but support access to birth control. And in that way, they're going to chart this path to success where they are less frequently the subject of the political attacks they've been facing relentlessly for the past decade. She has this kind of theory of the case that if we depoliticize Planned Parenthood,

if we make it clear that this is a health care issue, not a political issue, that the attacks will lessen, that common ground will be found, and that Planned Parenthood will have a more successful long-term trajectory. It will not be so narrowly seen as an abortion provider. Right. And this is where a lot of longtime Planned Parenthood staff members clashed with her. They had this view that as long as we are an abortion provider, we're going to be stuck in this political controversy. Depoliticization doesn't seem to be an option right now. You know, I think back to an interview I did with Mike Pence in 2011 where he said, you know, as long as Planned Parenthood is doing abortions, I am going to be after them.

So there's this, like, core fight over whether you even can depoliticize Planned Parenthood if they are committed to being an abortion provider and being the largest abortion provider in the United States. So from folks who had kind of been in the trenches of this debate for the past decade, they felt like this vision of just talking about it differently wasn't going to solve for the problem. It could actually be quite risky. If they are not out defending themselves day after day,

they might lose the ground that they have right now instead of gaining the new ground that Dr. Wen wants. We'll be right back. So how does this all come to a head? So this really comes to a head about a month ago. These issues have been simmering and they're getting worse. There's frustration among the staff. More and more people are leaving. News outlets are starting to report on the fact that there's tension at Planned Parenthood. And in mid-June, Dr. Wen is essentially asked to resign

from the organization. And there's about a month of negotiations around how it's going to happen, a desire to have an amicable parting. But that breaks down last week. Last week, in very quick succession, there is a meeting of the board where they vote to fire her. My colleague Shane Goldmacher reports that Lena Nguyen has been fired. She posts a statement to Twitter attacking Planned Parenthood. Nguyen said those philosophical differences about the future of the organization are why she was fired, writing, I came to Planned Parenthood to run a national health care organization Philosophical differences about the future of the organization are why she was fired, writing,

I came to Planned Parenthood to run a national health care organization and to advocate for the broad range of public health policies that affect our patients' health. However, the new board leadership has determined that the priority of Planned Parenthood moving forward is to double down on abortion rights advocacy. And this amicable parting that had been desired about a month ago quickly falls apart. Sarah, is this an example of Planned Parenthood not knowing who they were hiring when they bet on this doctor, this healthcare professional with this holistic vision? Or is it they didn't understand the depth of the threats against them at the time that they hired her? I think it's a mix of both of those. I don't think they understood until Dr. Wen was actually there leading the organization the difference in the visions that they had. Nobody hires a new chief executive for an organization hoping that they will leave eight months later. They clearly thought Dr. Wen was going to be a successful leader.

And that being said, it seems clear in retrospect she was not the right leader for the organization. That fact was probably forced out into the open earlier than it might have been in a different year because of this intense political battle that's happening. From everything you're saying, it feels like Dr. Wen's departure is a kind of win for abortion rights advocates in this moment. But I wonder if another way of thinking about it is that it's also a win for opponents of abortion rights

because those opponents want Planned Parenthood to just be an abortion provider and an abortion rights advocate and nothing more. And the group just rejected a vision for making it about something much more. Yeah. You know, if you looked at the kind of groups that oppose abortion rights, they saw this whole incident as Planned Parenthood showing its true colors. A stunning move from Planned Parenthood tonight. The organization has ousted its president, a medical doctor, after less than a year because perhaps she was not

woke enough. You have this leader who wants to be a health care organization and she gets ousted and like, look at what that shows you about Planned Parenthood and their priorities. Make no mistake, today's happenings show that Planned Parenthood is a political machine, a mistake. Today's happenings show that Planned Parenthood is a political machine, that their bottom line is about abortion. It's not about health care. And Leanna Wynn's quick departure after less than a year of heading up Planned Parenthood just underscores the fact that this is a political organization. So they're almost celebrating this moment and saying, you know, we told you so. This is exactly what Planned Parenthood is about. You would think that Planned Parenthood would say, hey, let's take it easy,

especially in this political election season. No. Instead, they're saying our president, our president meaning the president of Planned Parenthood, is not radical enough. She just wasn't radical enough. They're sort of crowing at what they're seeing here. Exactly.

This is what liberals and Democrats are doing to each other now. Earlier today, I talked to one of the folks who left Planned Parenthood, and she was saying, I would love to live in a world where we don't talk about the politics of abortion. Like, that is the place I want to be. I want to be where Dr. Wen is right now and talking about all the great health care services that we provide. But we're just not there right now. We do the politics out of necessity.

We combat the attacks to keep our clinics open. They want to live in the world that Dr. Lena Wen has outlined, but right now they can't. Sarah, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. To replace Dr. Nguyen, Planned Parenthood has named an acting president, Alexis Johnson. as, quote, a renowned social justice leader, lifelong political organizer, and a tireless advocate for reproductive rights and access to quality, affordable health care. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Monday, in a dramatic escalation of the campaign to oust Puerto Rico's governor,

tens of thousands of protesters filled a major highway in San Juan, paralyzing the capital city. The protests were prompted by hundreds of leaked text messages that captured the cozy relationship between the governor, Ricardo Rosselló, and special interests interests and showed him mocking his own citizens. In a concession to the protesters, the governor said on Sunday that he would not seek re-election, but so far he has refused to step down.

And... We're having very good talks with the Speaker of the House, with Nancy Pelosi. We're having very good talks with the Speaker of the House, with Nancy Pelosi. We're having very good talks with Chuck Schumer and, of course, with Mitch McConnell. Congress and the White House have reached a two-year budget deal that would raise spending by $320 billion

and avoid a fiscal showdown until after the 2020 presidential election. Very important that we take care of our military. Our military was depleted. And in the last two and a half years, we've undepleted it, okay, to put it mildly. The deal would boost military spending, as the president wants, and increase domestic spending, as congressional Democrats want. But it has angered Republicans by failing to reduce

government spending. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.