A few years ago the hot issue was federal funding for abstinence education. Again, would we please email, call, organize, alert, write and opine, preferably in the major news media. And then there is the perennial battle over U.S. funding for international family planning efforts. And parental consent for teens to get contraception. And whether the issue of statutory rape should have a higher profile in family planning clinics that serve teens. And what about men? And…well.

As the CEO of my group, I am often in the position of deciding which battle to pick and what tactic to take, even if we do decide we want to enter the fray in a public way. Although I would like to say that I have an orderly process of deciding when to weigh in, it is as much intuitive as it is rational. Still, there are questions I ask myself before deciding where to plant a stake.

Do we have anything interesting and important to say about the topic?

If not, why put out a press statement or do some other public thing? Even simple statements take time to craft, and it’s not worth the effort if I am quite sure that no one will attend to our views.

Even if we do have something interesting to say, will we be group number 59,034,985 saying it?

I have never been really impressed by petitions. It all feels very “me, too”-ish and therefore not that effective. I think this is a minority view. A major exception is if a close personal friend or colleague asks for the support. Friendship matters.

Will taking action be consistent with our organizational mission and our carefully crafted positions and values?

Case in point: From Day One (16 years ago this month), the National Campaign has said that we are a research-based organization. This sounds quite anodyne, but in the recent wars over funding for abstinence-only programs, this posture was not always popular. We said, in essence, “in the war between comprehensive sex education and abstinence-only education, we come down on the side of science.” This has meant that we have been open to supporting abstinence programs if evaluation data show that they helped young people postpone sex. In many left/liberal quarters, this posture has been deeply unpopular.

I also ask myself whether taking action will violate or support another core organizational attribute, which is respecting the role of faith and values — in this case, in the areas of sexual activity and the use of contraception.

Returning then to the issues front and center this week — the Catholic Church, health insurance and contraception — I am not yet sure what we should or will do. We cannot stay silent, as contraception is critical to women’s health and well-being, is used by almost every woman in America at some point in her life, and has been one of the main driving forces behind the remarkable decline in teen pregnancy since the early 1990s (down by more than  40 percent).