What do Verizon and the Bush Administration Have in Common?

Priscilla J. Smith

Thanks to Jack for inviting me to continue posting to Balkinization about reproductive justice issues.

On the face of it, last week’s brouhaha over Verizon’s censorship of NARAL appears to be the result of a simple corporate bungle, an “isolated incident” caused by a misinterpretation of “a dusty internal policy,” as corporate spokespeople put it. But behind this corporate snafu is an unhappy marriage of two much larger issues.

Thousands grew outraged last week when Verizon threatened to censor their private communications. Expert Lea Shaver of Yale Law School’s Information Society Project reports that advocates of legislation designed to prevent censorship on the net have been concerned about the censorship potential of Verizon’s internal policies for some time but were dismissed as paranoid. Verizon is also a principal sponsor of the key corporate interest group opposing such legislation.

Couple a vague policy giving control over communication content to anti-choice executives and abortion censorship hits the airwaves. Thomas Tauke, Verizon’s executive vice president for public relations and lobbying, who was defeated in his 1990 run for the U.S. Senate in part by NARAL advocacy because he advocated a constitutional amendment “recognizing” the “personhood of the unborn.”

I am gratified by the outcry against Verizon’s policy, but the frustrating aspect of this is what is overlooked: government censorship of information about abortion care, and advocacy for it, is alive and well in the United States. The Alan Guttmacher Institute reports that seventeen states offer drivers “Choose Life” specialty license plates to express their anti-abortion sentiment but most do not offer a pro-family planning or “pro-choice” license plate to express a contrary viewpoint.

Most of these states then discriminate further by raising large sums of money that are funneled to anti-abortion organizations. In seven states, the funds go to specific anti-abortion groups; in eight states the money goes to groups that provide services related to adoption, as long as they don’t also provide counseling about, or even simply referrals for, abortions (two states do both). So of two groups providing the same care for women who carry their pregnancies to term, the one that doesn’t tell a woman that abortion is an available option can get money; the one that provides full options counseling can’t.

In South Carolina, a suit challenging the “Choose Life” plates’ discrimination against abortion expression was successful; in Tennessee it failed. When the ACLU – attorneys for the Tennessee losers – went to the Supreme Court to raise this direct conflict between two federal appellate circuit courts, usually strong grounds for the Court to agree to review a decision, the Court refused to even hear the case.

We also export this censorship worldwide. Ironically, the very message NARAL was trying to send was one about “Bush’s global gag rule.” This is the rule that, among other things, prevents overseas medical groups from receiving desperately needed financial assistance if they advocate reform of an overseas’ government’s laws about abortion care. Those who refused to cave in to the Bush Administration’s pressure to stop talking about abortion lost funding vital to their patients.

Legislation that would repeal this gag is pending in Congress. If Congress sends the legislation to the President, how many people will text message the President to ask him to make like Verizon and sign it?

Priscilla J. Smith
Posted 11:51 AM by Priscilla J. Smith [link]