In this section there are four passages followed by
questions or unfinished statements, each with four suggested answers marked [A],
[B], [C], and [D]. Choose the one that you think is the best answer.
Mark your answers on your ANSWER SHEET. TEXT A Inside his small office,
Jim Sedlak picks the receiver and listens as worried callers sound off about the
Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s newest clinic of its distribution of
pamphlets in their area. They don’t like it, they tell him, but they don’t know
how to stop it. So Sedlak leans back in his chair and, drawing on almost 20
years of experience, tells them how tiny anti-abortion groups can tackle the
nation’s largest abortion-rights group. Sedlak has been taking
aim at Planned Parenthood for years through his small, grassroots anti-abortion
organization, American Life League’s STOPP International, a two-man group whose
sole mission is to bring down its giant ideological opponent. Planned
Parenthood normally brushes off attacks from such "fringe groups", reserving its
considerable strength for reproductive healthcare services and advocacy. But
it’s hard to ignore recent anti-abortion legislative victories like the ban on
so-called partial birth abortion passed in November, the more recent Unborn
Victims of Violence Act, which defines fetuses as unborn children, and similar
state measures against fetal homicide①. Anti-abortion
activities regaining ground, and that has forced Planned Parenthood to take a
closer look at the opposition. "It gives us a big challenge," Planned Parenthood
President Gloria Feldt told NEWSWEEK, "but we’re ready." Feldt
has learned that even individual efforts can have nationwide ripple effects.
Take the case of John Pisciotta, director of Pro-life Waco and a Baylor
University economics professor, who sparked a furor in
Waco, Texas, this February when he decided to attack the relationship between
the local Girl Scouts council and Planned Parenthood②. The council,
long a participant in a half-day Planned Parenthood conference on puberty
education, had ignored Pisciotta’s pleas to distance itself from what he
considered "an assault on Christian morality." After chatting with Sedlak, a
longtime friend, Psciotta recorded a 60-second spot for a Christian radio
station urging listeners to reconsider supporting the scouts. Then, he asked
them to boycott their Thin Mints. The cookie boycott wasn’t
successful—sales actually rose 2 percent—but the local council did break off its
relationship with the group. And, much to Pisciotta’s surprise, his local
concern became a national one. STOPP was flooded with phone calls from angry
parents demanding to know whether their councils were linked with Planned
Parenthood. Individual Girl Scouts troops have autonomy in choosing their
programs, and national CEO Kim Cloninger has said that those aligned with
Planned Parenthood would continue their relationships. Sedlak compile a list of
them that he posted online last week. It’s up to individual viewers, he says, to
decide what to do with that information. From the passage we know that the boycott of Thin Mints was ______.