Cécile Richards, former president of Planned Parenthood, dies at 67 | Planned Parenthood

Cecile Richards, the former president of Planned Parenthood who helped transform the reproductive health care giant into a formidable political organization and make support for abortion rights a virtual requirement for Democratic candidates, died Monday after a battle against brain cancer. She was 67 years old.

“This morning, our beloved Cécile passed away at home, surrounded by her family and her faithful dog, Ollie,” Richards’ family wrote in a statement. “Our hearts are broken today, but no words can do justice to the joy she brought to our lives.”

Over the course of her career, Richards has become one of the biggest faces of abortion rights in the United States, if not one of the most important American activists of the 21st century.

Under his leadership, Planned Parenthood became a pillar of Democratic politics, fought numerous congressional attempts to defund the organization, and tried to block a torrent of state-level efforts to restrict the access to abortion.

Her mother, former Texas Governor Ann Richards, was a political legend, but Richards herself became a household name in 2015, after anti-abortion activists released secret recordings of Planned Parenthood employees allegedly discussing of the sale of fetal tissue. The recordings — which Planned Parenthood said had been falsified — prompted multiple congressional and state investigations that failed to substantiate their contents, and led Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives to United to question Richards in a highly publicized hearing lasting several hours.

After leaving Planned Parenthood in 2018, Richards founded Supermajority, an organization dedicated to promoting women’s leadership. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022 – in a case involving the type of state-level abortion restrictions that Richards tried to defeat – Richards launched Charley, a robot for helping abortion seekers get accurate information about the procedure, and Abortion in America, a campaign to raise awareness of post-Roe abortion stories. In late 2024, Joe Biden awarded Richards the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.

“One of the biggest lessons I have learned as a long-time organizer is that there are no permanent wins or losses. We must fight for every inch of progress and we can’t take anything for granted,” Richards wrote on Instagram after receiving the honor.

“This is especially true in difficult times like the one we find ourselves in now. But what a joy and privilege to be part of the long struggle to make our country a more just and hopeful place.

Richards was born on July 15, 1957, in Waco, Texas, and grew up primarily in Dallas and Austin. His political involvement began at an early age, as his parents were ardent progressives.

“They were interested in politics the way other couples were interested in bowling,” Richards told NPR in 2014. “All the movements that were going through town, whether it was the farm workers, the labor movement , the women’s movement, they were involved, as were all their friends.”

After graduating from Brown University, Richards began working as a union organizer in Louisiana, where she met her husband, Kirk Adams, who later held leadership positions with the powerful Service Employees International Union . The couple had three children together.

Before the 1990 election, the family returned to Texas to help Ann Richards run for governor. Known for her dizzying silver hair and acerbic wit – during her speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, Richards said Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, “just backwards and in high heels” – Richards won a close victory. , thanks to a coalition of voters of color. She then lost her re-election campaign in 1994 (to future US President George W. Bush), but remained Cécile Richards’ political star for the rest of her life. A chapter in Cécile Richards’ best-selling 2018 memoir, Make Trouble, is titled: “What Would Ann Richards Do?”

After Ann Richards lost the governorship, Cécile attended a Texas state school board meeting in 1995, where she saw right-wing activists campaigning against providing students with information about the sex education and LGBTQ+ rights. Struck by the rise of the religious right, Richards founded Texas Freedom Network, one of the Lone Star State’s most prominent progressive advocacy organizations.

Richards then moved to Washington, D.C., where she served as deputy chief of staff to Nancy Pelosi before helping found and lead the America Votes voting rights coalition.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America hired Richards as president in 2006. Two years later, the nonprofit organization endorsed Barack Obama for president. It was only the second time in the group’s 85-year history that it had supported a presidential candidate, but it heralded Planned Parenthood’s increased involvement in electoral politics—a hallmark of Richards’ time in office. head.

By dramatically expanding Planned Parenthood’s state-level fundraising and organizing, particularly in the face of repeated Republican efforts to defund it, Richards built it into an organization capable of marshalling votes as well as making or breaking votes. political candidates. After 2010, when cross-Democratic debates over abortion coverage nearly derailed the Affordable Care Act, Planned Parenthood worked to make support for abortion rights a key part of the Democratic Party platform. . Today, there is only one anti-abortion Democrat in Congress.

After being diagnosed with brain cancer in 2023, Richards continued to work on left-wing causes. She co-chaired American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic network that includes a formidable Super Pac, and spoke at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in support of Kamala Harris. Along with Kate Cox, a Texan who filed a lawsuit after being denied a medically necessary abortion, Richards voted at the Texas ceremony in favor of Harris.

In their statement, Richards’ family said those wishing to honor Richards’ memory should keep in mind something she often said during the last year of her life: “It’s hard not to imagine future generations asking one day: “When there were so many things”. The stakes are high for our country, what have you done? The only acceptable answer is: “Whatever we can.”