When you go head to head against a tough competitor in business, it is extremely helpful, if not essential, to understand the lay of the competitive landscape.
And though your competitor’s past behavior is often a reasonable predictor of his future behavior, you can’t always assume that’s the case – if his back is against the wall, your competitor may completely revamp his strategy in an attempt to first defend his business, and then go back on the offensive.
I believe this describes exactly what Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry have done by changing their strategy from offering abortions primarily through in-clinic procedures to offering abortions primarily through distribution of the so-called abortion pill directly to women through the mail.
Said another way, the abortion “product” has migrated from an in-clinic procedure conducted by an abortionist to an in-home procedure where a woman takes the abortion pill to conduct a “do-it-yourself” abortion.
The abortion industry often calls use of the abortion pill by a woman in the privacy of her own home a “self-managed” abortion.
And it appears the abortion industry’s emerging preferred category description for the abortion pill is “Plan C,” so you will start to hear that term used more often by media outlets friendly to the pro-abortion side.
Unfortunately for the pro-life community, that has for decades had such high expectations that the number of abortions would be substantially reduced by both the passing of pro-life laws, and the overturning of laws that made abortion legal, it seems that Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry have dashed those expectations.
More pro-lifers are starting to catch on that the overturning of Roe v. Wade, while certainly an enormous moral victory, is not having nearly the expected practical impact in terms of reducing the number of abortions.
I don’t think this lack of practical impact is surprising given that the distribution of the abortion pill is incredibly difficult to police, no matter the federal or state laws that outlaw such distribution.
We already know from the failures of the so-called “war on drugs” how impractical it is to shut off distribution of any illegal drug that is in high demand.
I believe we’re in a new era that will likely be uncomfortable for many pro-lifers – and era where what I call “traffic cop” solutions, in other words passing pro-life laws or overturning laws that made abortion legal, will not work that well from a practical perspective of reducing abortion numbers.
A different solution, and I believe the more effective one long term, is to market the “choose life” product to young women in such a way that it becomes their preferred “choice” even before they ever face an unexpected pregnancy.
I believe the pro-life community will eventually defeat Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry to the extent that it shifts from a focus on laws to a focus on marketing.
This article was published in Heroic Media‘s weekly newsletter