An Object Lesson in the Dangers of Mission Creep and Ideological Capture in Issue-Advocacy Groups

Dave Weigel, who has left the Washington Post for Semafor, has a report on why Planned Parenthood’s effort to support pro-abortion Democrats in Arizona is backfiring. In part, this is the now-familiar story where pro-abortion Democrats thought everybody was so pro-abortion that they didn’t see the danger in being utterly uncompromising on the issue, while Republicans such as Blake Masters were making politically savvy tactical retreats on the issue. But it also contains a cautionary tale for single-issue groups that give in to mission creep and get too ideologically invested in being all-issues culture warriors:

Republicans also started talking about the least popular positions Planned Parenthood and its Arizona affiliate had taken, unrelated to abortion. In Arizona, that started with “defunding the police.” The national Planned Parenthood Action Fund endorsed the idea in June 2020, explaining that it meant “investing in community-based solutions, education, and health care,” and teeing up countless GOP attacks anyway. Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona went further. In July 2020, its board began requiring any candidate who wanted its endorsement to “return any campaign contributions from police unions and other policing organizations.”…When GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake went after Planned Parenthood in a TV ad, it was over the “defund” statement, accusing Hobbs of being backed “by radical groups that want to defund our police.”

Planned Parenthood of Arizona was blindsided, because its leadership was so deep into left-wing rhetoric that it could no longer see the danger:

Brittany Fonteno, who became PPAA’s president and CEO a year ago, said in an interview that . . . as their campaigners knocked doors across the state to talk about the Republican threat to legal abortion, there’d been a “concerted effort” to paint Democrats and allies as anti-cop. But the position itself wasn’t going to change. “There is a real intersection between bodily autonomy and police brutality,” Fonteno explained. “With the majority of our patients being people of color from communities that historically and currently face higher rates of police violence, it was a step that the board of directors felt they could take to start to address some of that.”

As Weigel notes, the ideological extremism extends to transgender ideology as well:

Abortion rights groups shifted left during Donald Trump’s presidency, in step with most of the progressive movement. The phrase “safe, legal, and rare” was ditched to make room for less apologetic language; language about “women” getting abortions was supplanted by language about “people” getting them, to incorporate trans and nonbinary people who are able to give birth. In our 30-minute interview, Fonteno did not use the word “women” once. Planned Parenthood’s abortion advocacy is popular in Arizona, but turn on a TV right now and you’ll see ads from the new Citizens for Sanity PAC about gender identity and ads from GOP candidates about “defunding” – all of it muddying up an issue Democrats want to be clear and simple.

If they wanted it to be clear and simple, they should have stayed a single-issue group. There’s a lesson there for issue advocates on the right as well.