New York Fashion Industry Women Heavyweights Launch Major Campaign For Planned Parenthood

Anna Wintour (C) attends the Brock Collection fashion show during, New York Fashion Week: The Shows at Gallery 3, Skylight Clarkson Sq on February 9, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images for IMG)

Vogue US editor Anna Wintour set the pace for the New York Fashion industry's support for Planned Parenthood. Sitting in the front row at the Brock Collection's New York Fashion Week presentation. Thursday February 9. The brand, headed by Laura Vassar and Kristopher Brock, won the CFDA Fashion Fund Award in 2016. The coveted prize was presented to by creative and romantic partners by Vogue and the Council of Fashion Designers of America. 

In a spectacular announcement that will benefit countless poor women across America, CFDA -- which organizes New York Fashion Week -- announced a partnership with Planned Parenthood, which is in the crosshairs of the Trump administration anyway they can defund it. With their domination of Congress and the Presidency, President Trump will sign the legislation that President Clinton would have vetoed. 

Led by three incredible industry heavyweights Diane von Furstenberg, Tracy Reese (who's spearheading the campaign) and Tory Burch, over 43 designers and fashion houses have now signed on to the initiative, and the numbers are climbing.  The designers are strongly encouraged to wear their pink pins stating 'Fashion Stands With Planned Parenthood' during his or her final runway walk at the end of these much-photographed shows. 

Front-of-house staff, front row attendees, PR agents, influencers and many of the models will be wearing their pink pins, designed by Vogue parent company Conde Nast. The campaign will also be broadcast by a #IStandWithPP social media campaign. 

Like the American Civil Liberties Union -- spearheading the legal defense of those impacted by Trump's immigration ban -- Planned Parenthood has seen a dramatic increase in donations since Trump's election. In the post-election November/December period, Planned Parenthood announced a 40-fold increase in donations, 70% of which came from new supporters. 

The campaign is critical -- not only because Republicans led by President Donald Trump are determined to defund the organization providing critical health services to American women and especially poor women. On Saturday February 11, anti-choice protests are scheduled at Planned Parenthood clinics across the country. 

Ahead of these protests, the Feminist Majority Foundation has released a new report showing a dramatic increase in violence and threats of violence against abortion providers in the last two years. 

"This weekend, Planned Parenthood is the target," foundation president Ellie Smeal said of planned actions demanding the defunding of Planned Parenthood. "The public must be aware that this is no ordinary protesting... This hostile climate at women's health clinics and towards health care workers is accompanied by an increase in severe violence and threats."

The foundation's report found that the number of clinics that experienced the most severe types of threats and violence, including death threats, stalking, and blocking clinic access, dramatically increased from 19.7 percent of providers in the first half of 2014 to 34.2 percent of providers in the first half of 2016.

It was in 2015 that anti-abortion activists produced a series of heavily edited (and since debunked) videos that ostensibly showed Planned Parenthood workers negotiating the sale of fetal body parts. That smear campaign has been used as the basis for a national effort to defund the healthcare organization. 

Supporters of Planned Parenthood are not sitting still. Beyond the heavyweights fronting the biggest PR campaign in New York Fashion Week history, Saturday counter-rallies are being planned at clinics around the country. PP has actually discouraged the counter protests.

Huffington Post  women's editor Jenavieve Hatch reported earlier this week that, "showing up to counter protest isn't actually helpful."

"Our goal is making sure our patients are comfortable," Adrienne Verrilli, associate vice president of communications at Planned Parenthood of New York City, told Hatch. "The quieter it is outside, and the less people are engaging with each other, the better it is for our patients."

A separate pro-Planned Parenthood rally has been organized to take place elsewhere in New York City on Saturday.  

The Feminist Majority Foundation produced this video to accompany its report, and it rings to true for me. These protests are led primarily by white men who are furious that women were awarded the right to abortion -- only 3% of Planned Parenthood services and an estimated 10 percent of revenue -- and years ago I was stalked by one of them. 

For a year I was hunted by one of these men, not because I had an abortion, but because I was a member of a televised panel on women's rights. When asked if I supported the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, I responded affirmatively. Days later I opened my front door to find a box filled with a bloody, decapitated animal and a a note that my stalked intended to decapitate me. Sounds like ISIS right? 

Many other boxes followed -- one filled with a bloody butcher knife and another with a box of rope. My stalked threatened me with decapitation one minute and the rope he would use to hang me from a tree, displaying my dismembered headless body for the world to witness. All this extreme violence was aimed at me solely for a statement made on television. Eventually, I stopped opening the boxes left on my doorstep and took them unopened to the police station. My phone # was disconnected. 

My husband was away traveling for work during the week. We lived in a two-story townhouse, and I was terrified that my stalker would break into our house, and there would be no way out for me. Countless nights I was sleepless, standing in the bedroom window at 3 am, comforted by the police car that drove down my street at least once an hour. The Buffalo, New York police were so concerned about me that they immediately put me in their police protection program. Historically, the anti-choice movement was very strong in Buffalo, and pro-choice people have been murdered there. 

Terrified by the knowledge that my stalker knew about my business and where it was located, I always parked my car in front of the doorway before the day ended, so that I could lock the door and quickly get into my car. My stalker was so brazen, given that the police station was across the street and perhaps a quarter mile away. I got into my car and started the engine on a cold, fall night. As I began to back away, the masked man who hunted me came flying across my windshield, and I screamed violently. At that moment, I didn't care if I killed him. An expert driver, I put my car in first gear, gassed the accelerator and switched gears like race car driver. He rolled off the hood of my car as I gunned the engine, not carrying if he was injured. Minutes later, as I sobbed in the phone from my friends' house, I explained to the lieutenant who gave me his home number, that I heard a thud but didn't look back at the scene of his man's attempted murder of me. "He could be dead," I wept. "I just don't know."

That was the end of my year-long nightmare dealing with the pro-life movement -- a group of people who have no regard for my rights or the rights of any person who supports Planned Parenthood. As a member of the New York fashion industry and supporter of Planned Parenthood, the crisis of being stalked effectively silenced me for years in speaking about women's rights. In 2007, Anne of Carversville was born with the conviction that I could be silent no longer.

It isn't only Planned Parenthood that is at risk. Key members of Congress -- including Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Paul Ryan support a personhood bill that equates the rights of any pregnant women with those of a zygote. A married woman with three children and a husband who adores her has the same civil rights as those of a 24-hour old fertilized egg. And the state takes charge of her pregnancy in proposed personhood legislation. A pregnant woman not wearing rubber-soles shoes on a rainy day could be charged with manslaughter if she slips and endures a miscarriage as a result of her perceived carelessness. 

These are critical times for America, and I am so proud to stand with Planned Parenthood and New York Fashion Week in support of the organization. WE MUST #RESIST! ~ Anne