NY Planned Parenthood to Ford: You're Not Pro-Choice

Planned Parenthood Advocates of New York has a message for Harold Ford Jr.: Stop calling yourself a pro-choice politician.

M. Tracey Brooks, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Advocates of New York issued a statement to Ford on Friday.

A prochoice representative supports a women's right to access safe, legal, comprehensive reproductive health care without government interference.

Ford's voting record and recent public statements prove that he does not trust women to make their own decisions. He cannot claim to be supportive of our issues when, as a Tennessee Congressman, he demonstrated that he is clearly not prochoice.

Planned Parenthood Action Fund did not endorse Ford in his elections for Congress in 2000 or 2004, nor for his Senate bid in 2006.

New Yorkers demand that 100 percent pro-choice champions represent them in the U.S. Senate. If Ford wants to understand the true definition of a pro-choice individual, he need only look at the voting records of New York's U.S. Senators and compare them with his own.

Two weeks ago Ford held a meeting with NARAL Pro-Choice New York President Kelli Conlin, after which she said wouldn't call him "anti-choice" but nor would she call him "pro-choice."  

Ford appeared on NBC's Meet the Press last Sunday and continued to press his position on reproductive rights.

MR. GREGORY:  What about--the question of whether you're pro choice or pro life has come up.  Final question on this, which is would you support parental notification in New York, something it now does not have?

REP. FORD:  I have--in the Congress, I've voted against late-term abortion--voted for--against late-term abortions.  I am pro choice.  The record has been distorted.  The president of a--the Tennessee Planned Parenthood has said that Harold is pro choice.  He's a friend.  My wife is pro choice.  I can assure you--who I wish happy Valentine's Day to this morning--if I were not pro choice, my wife nor my mother--Mom, happy Valentine's Day, too...

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

REP. FORD:  ...they neither would allow me in their homes if I were not.

MR. GREGORY:  Parental notification in New York, do you support it?

REP. FORD:  I'm for--I'm for parental notification other than extreme cases, where a judge may have to be involved if there's, if there's a dispute between a child and a family.  If you--if your daughter can't go to an NR-17 movie, David, without some notification, it would seem to me that a family ought to be made aware of some of these.

In an interview with RH RealityCheck on Tuesday, M. Tracey Brooks said she still doesn't believe Ford can call himself pro-choice, especially to New Yorkers.

"[Ford] continues to cling to anti-choice positions which limit teenagers' ability to access a full-range of reproductive healthcare ... [and] limit the help [women] can access," Brook said, referring to Ford's continued support for parental notification and well as the partial-birth abortion ban. "Pro-choice legislators trust women to make their own healthcare decisions and they support access to a full range of reproductive healthcare options, including abortion -- regardless of whether it is politically  popular and especially when it protects a women's health. And his record in Congress did not do that."

Brooks said that Ford's office has not reached out to Planned Parenthood for a meeting as he requested of NARAL.

More importantly, Brooks said, why throw over a pro-choice "champion" like Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand for someone like Ford who "wavers" on this issue?

"We don't endorse anyone who is not 100% prochoice and that record [on partial-birth and parental leave] would not gain you 100% rating on our questionnaire. It is the role of advocacy groups to be able to differentiate between somebody like Harold Ford, who has a voting record very different from our New York senators.

"In New York we have two strong pro-choice champions that our nation, not only our state, relies on to beat back bad bills that hurt women's access and ability to have a full range of reproductive healthcare. There would be no reason that New York would want to send anybody with a different record than our two U.S. senators on this issue to the Senate."

Ford has claimed that pro-choice organizations have applied to him a double standard, giving Gillibrand more leeway for her vote for healthcare reform despite the restrictions on abortion coverage in the current legislation, a vote he says he would have opposed, than their stated stance of needing 100 percent for pro-choice positions all the time.

Brooks answer to that is "healthcare reform's not over yet. And Sen. Gillibrand has been in the trenches fighting for us this whole time, so that issue's not over yet."

As part of his plan to meet with traditional groups of Democratic supporters, Ford is set to meet with the Stonewall Democratic Club on Wednesday. Brooks said that Ford hasn't picked up any support since announcing a month ago he was interested in potentially seeking the Democratic nomination.

"I think the biggest piece of this is [that] as Mr. Ford is talking to New Yorkers, he hasn't caught on to where our values lie and [these values go] beyond just our issue of reproductive health care. Mr. Ford is making himself less and less relevant in this conversation," Brooks said.