Planned Parenthood Readies Counterattack : Family planning: In wake of recent Supreme Court setbacks, Faye Wattleton says her group will fight back with ‘old-fashioned, hardball politics.’

Her opponents are mighty--President George Bush and the Roman Catholic church, the U.S. Supreme Court and Mother Teresa--and sometimes they must appear overwhelming.

“They don’t,” says Faye Wattleton, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Because, she says, recent surveys indicate a majority of Americans and members of Congress share her views on abortion rights, secular morality and interference by church and state.

“Maybe I will be forever innocent, as my hairdresser likes to say . . . but I just don’t give people who hold positions--religious, political or social positions of power and influence--more power than they deserve to be granted.”

Yet this struggle of Planned Parenthood--now in its 75th year and clearly shaken by two recent Supreme Court rulings that restrict its abortion counseling--must surely seem endless.

“I think it probably is, at least in our culture,” agrees Wattleton. She sees further setbacks and fears that even Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, could be reversed. But she also predicts advances in contraceptive rights through “a younger generation coming into maturity with certain expectations and assumptions that will not tolerate failure to meet them.”

So just how paramount is this issue of family planning alongside such global concerns as homelessness, hunger, drugs, crime and the recession?

“If anything, it is more paramount,” Wattleton insists. Many social problems, she says, derive from unwanted children born with reduced possibilities for productive lives. “If anything, it forces one to be more resolved because we cope with a lot of social ills that are entirely preventable and avoidable if we would but have the will to do so.”

Reenergizing that will brought Wattleton campaigning to Southern California last week. The original plan, set months ago, was for her to address the annual meeting of the Los Angeles chapter, one of 177 Planned Parenthood affiliates.

Then came the Supreme Court’s double decisions.

Three weeks ago, by a 5-4 vote, the justices upheld government regulations that ban abortion counseling by employees in 4,100 federally funded clinics. Ten days later, the court affirmed the government’s right to halt aid to overseas health organizations that promote birth control by abortion.

Wattleton, a 13-year leader of a cause whose heat and visibility have projected her from federation head to celebrity spokeswoman, immediately went to the hustings.

That annual meeting at the Beverly Hills Hotel turned into a crowded Hollywood luncheon with a press conference and guest protests by Morgan Fairchild, Cybill Shepherd and Polly Bergen. Media that might otherwise have ignored the event, showed up in force. A “Prime Time” television crew traveled with Wattleton from New York to profile her public moments and private musings.

Costume-jeweled and elegant, controlled and controlling, Wattleton crammed her bicoastal, 22-hour days. There were announcements of Planned Parenthood’s $4-million advertising counterattack on the court rulings and next month’s 20-city tour to meet with newspaper editorial boards.

Yes, she said, Planned Parenthood has instructed its 850 clinics in 46 states to follow the national organization’s policy: They will continue advising 4 million clients annually that abortion is a viable option for unwanted pregnancies.

No, she added, despite an estimated loss of $35 million in federal funds (from a total annual budget of $303 million), Planned Parenthood will continue operations. She hopes to make up part of the shortfall through increased private funding.

And maybe, Wattleton said, new and supportive bills accelerating through both houses of Congress will pass by margins broad enough to underline the full mood and rage of the country.

“Then the focus will have to be on political pressure on George Bush not to veto,” she said. “It can be done. Whether he will respond or not is another thing.

“I wish that there was some magic bullet and we could say: ‘This is the new scheme and this is going to solve it,’ ” she said. “But I’m afraid it is just going to be old-fashioned, hardball politics. Of lobbying, of marching, of writing, of calling . . . “

In a hotel suite interview--one that postponed a return flight to New York and a date with her only daughter, 15-year-old Felicia, to see Spike Lee’s “Jungle Fever”--Wattleton said the court decisions involve much more than abortion rights.

Free speech is under siege: “This is an attack . . . a court saying there are certain words you cannot utter.”

Freedom of assembly is threatened: “The court . . . is saying that a doctor in a family planning clinic can’t sit and discuss certain things with a woman. It has invaded the assembly of the doctor-patient relationship.”

And she believes the rulings are sexist: “The fundamental issue (is) over women’s power and our capacity to be equal in our society . . . it strikes at the integrity of women, not just at the choices around childbearing.”

Wattleton said she was “absolutely shocked” by the “gratuitously broad” decision from a court judged by conventional wisdom to be “strong and (for) free speech.”

But she admits that her own view is rooted in the ‘60s and the Supreme Court of liberal Chief Justice Earl Warren where “the recognition of rights for women and minorities became a large part of my understanding of what this country is all about.”

Now, she charges, the court has been stocked by conservative thinkers selected by a succession of Republican Presidents. The result is “two branches of government aligned against reproductive rights . . .”

Under such a court, Wattleton believes, Roe vs. Wade is in jeopardy. Challenges to abortion laws in Pennsylvania and Guam are pending. But therein lies a subtle glimmer for Planned Parenthood, she says, and a dozen other organizations supporting abortion rights.

“The court, unless it plays total politics, would be scheduled to come out with another opinion on abortion rights before the ’92 election,” Wattleton explains. “If the court rules (negatively) as we expect it to, I think it could really have a phenomenal impact on the outcome of that election.

“I don’t think there is any question that what the Republicans have done--which is to try to stack the court with people who don’t see any basis in the Constitution for the right or privacy of reproduction--could come home to roost for them.”

Faye Wattleton. Born in St. Louis in 1943 as the daughter and granddaughter of ministers of the Church of God. She heard the passion of her mother’s ringing sermons and it became her oratory.

She studied nursing at Ohio State with graduate studies at Columbia University where she says she saw women die from the septicemia of botched abortions. Some had had Lysol and bleach injected into their uteruses. Wattleton has never erased those memories.

In 1970 she was hired as executive director of Planned Parenthood of Dayton, Ohio. Membership tripled. Eight years later she was chosen to head the national organization and its reign of graying, white male business administrators ended.

To this day, Wattleton cannot decipher the sense that lead venerable Planned Parenthood to select a 34-year-old, black, divorced mother as its national leader. But her words were uncompromising from that start: “If you’re not clear where you stand on the abortion issue, if you’re worried that birth control for teen-agers encourages promiscuity, or you’re not so sure everybody ought to have access to birth control whenever they want it . . . it’s probably not the kind of outfit you’re comfortable with.”

About 70% of the federation’s professional staff were not comfortable with that. They walked or were fired.

But under Wattleton’s command, the federation grew and its affiliates became an aggressive, stubborn, outspoken and militant majority of the abortion rights movement. Wattleton brought identical characteristics to the assaults of the ‘80s on legal abortion.

She remains a hands-on administrator at the national offices in New York who commutes to Washington to appear before more committees than a cabinet member. One hundred days each year are spent on the road. She sits patiently for profiles by Vogue and Ms., didn’t mind being named by Harper’s Bazaar as one of its “Over-40 and Sensational” women, and will visit Donahue and Oprah whenever they call.

It is no hollow matter of self-glorification. To publicize Faye Wattleton, she explains, is to promote Planned Parenthood. To promote Planned Parenthood is to educate the public.

There is, however, a high price for this exposure. Planned Parenthood clinics have been torched. Wattleton has received death threats. Now there is a shadow at her back during public appearances: an armed bodyguard.

“These are the ornaments of public life and the controversy which don’t enrich my life,” she says.

And when she arrived at the Capitol Hilton in Washington in 1989 to receive a humanitarian award from the Congressional Black Caucus, she was met by anti-abortion protesters. One banner read: “Faye Wattleton: Princess of Death.”

Only humor softened the hurt for Felicia, who had accompanied her. “At least they consider me royalty,” Wattleton said.

Wattleton flies first-class because traveling 200,000 air miles each year in coach is murder on any six-footer. Her annual salary is $180,000. Still, she doesn’t think that is quite enough.

No matter the day or the meeting, says Wattleton, she must always be groomed for prime-time television. “Then cleaning bills which are about $200 a month,” she says. “When you have to clean more often, clothes don’t wear as well . . . Why am I telling you all this stuff?”

Probably because all this stuff tells of a softer Wattleton behind the disciplined speech and the slight chill used to maintain the seriousness of the day’s work.

This Faye Wattleton listens to Quincy Jones, likes Thai food, the movies, parties, dancing and scuffing around nights in a terry cloth bathrobe. Her work weeks are usually five-day, which prevents burnout and allows time with Felicia.

She makes no apologies for her stylish clothes, the beauty salon hair and perfect nails. Dressing to conform to the standards of others, she says, is dishonest, even confusing.

Wattleton sees herself as a demanding employer who expects more from herself. She says she is far too uncompromising to run for elective office.

“I do not make any apologies for my manner or personality,” she says. “I come from a long line of very strong, black African-American women who neither bend nor bow. I haven’t had very good modeling in submission.”

A magazine article once described her as “imperious” and she was not impressed.

“Rarely have I heard such labels placed on male executives,” she complains. “I find it frankly sexist. A woman who places a high priority on performance and excellence is seen as imperial. A man is seen as demanding and tough.”

She is touchy if a man makes special note, even a complimentary reference to her height. Why, she wants to know, should this make any difference? Why must men presume that all women should be of the same height?

She also remains sensitive to the suffering and hurt she saw as a nurse, the damaged children and their dying mothers.

Then these must be the images recalled for inspiration and strength when days seem too long and the work too tough?

“Somehow I don’t think that I have to reflect back on it,” she said. “Usually I read something that some man said about women and I get mad and that really propels me.”