In this file photograph, then-Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards speaks throughout a rally opposing repeal of the Affordable Care Act outdoors of the Capitol Building on July 27, 2017 in Washington, DC.
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Cecile Richards, a outstanding advocate for girls’s rights and different progressive causes, died Monday. In a press release, her household confirmed her demise, saying she handed away at dwelling, “surrounded by household and her ever-loyal canine, Ollie.”
“Our hearts are damaged at this time however no phrases can do justice to the enjoyment she delivered to our lives,” the assertion mentioned.
Richards was finest identified for her work main Planned Parenthood by a very difficult time which included threats to its funding and the primary election of Donald Trump to the presidency.
During greater than a decade on the helm of Planned Parenthood, Richards was usually referred to as upon to defend the reproductive well being group in opposition to assaults from political opponents. She and her motion confronted mounting challenges after Trump, who ran for President in 2016 on a promise to overturn the landmark abortion rights resolution Roe v. Wade, was first elected.
At the Women’s March in Washington the day after Trump’s inauguration in 2017, Richards addressed 1000’s of marchers and promised to combat his insurance policies.
“Today we’re right here to ship a message: we’re not gonna take this mendacity down, and we is not going to return,” Richards advised the group.
The subsequent yr, Richards introduced she was leaving Planned Parenthood. After leaving the group, Richards centered her efforts on main Supermajority, a bunch she’d co-founded to mobilize feminine voters.
In the years to return, the Trump administration would take steps designed to scale back entry to abortion, together with chopping off funds for teams that make abortion referrals, like Planned Parenthood, by an overhaul of the Title X household planning program.
Over the course of his first time period, Trump named three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, who, in June of 2022, would finally vote to overturn many years of abortion-rights precedent.
Despite setbacks for the abortion rights motion and a analysis of mind most cancers, Richards embodied an “indefatigable” dedication, says former Texas State Sen. Wendy Davis.
“Her perception [was] you’ll be able to’t hand over earlier than you even begin, and that it is at all times value a combat,” Davis mentioned.
Davis labored intently with Richards throughout a high-profile battle to defeat an anti-abortion invoice in Texas in 2013. Now a senior advisor to Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, the group’s political arm in Texas, Davis says Richards nonetheless conjures up her to maintain combating.
“You need to give in to the weariness and provides in to only giving up,” Davis mentioned. “When I’m tempted to really feel that manner, I take into consideration Cecile, and I do know lots of people do.”
Richards herself drew inspiration from the legacy of her mom, the late Texas Gov. Ann Richards, who was identified for her sharp wit and down-to-earth demeanor.
During a listening to earlier than the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in 2015, a male lawmaker requested her if she anticipated the committee “to be simpler on you since you’re a girl?”
“Absolutely not,” Richards responded. “That’s not how my mama raised me.”
The listening to stemmed from the discharge of secretly-recorded movies by the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group that accused Planned Parenthood of promoting fetal physique elements. Planned Parenthood mentioned the sting movies have been edited to be intentionally deceptive.
Dr. Colleen McNicholas, Chief Medical Officer at Planned Parenthood Great Rivers within the St. Louis space, knew Richards for greater than a decade by their advocacy for abortion rights.
“I feel she actually modified the best way that the motion engaged publicly; she was a really seen and daring presence,” McNicholas says. “She wasn’t afraid to take questions, to say the phrase ‘abortion.'”
Washington Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat with a protracted historical past of advocacy for reproductive rights, credit Richards with an instrumental function in ensuring the Affordable Care Act, which handed underneath President Barack Obama, included contraceptive protection.
Murray says regardless of the setbacks the motion has confronted in recent times, she sees Richards for example of continuous to combat.
“I’d take what Cecile has carried out in her lifetime and use it as a cost to all of us now: you progress ahead, you combat for what you consider in, you will have the braveness to face up and say what is correct,” Murray says. “You take these setbacks, study from them, and transfer ahead, and she or he’s at all times carried out that.”
In an Instagram submit in January 2024, months after her most cancers analysis, Richards described going by a whirlwind of remedies, time with household, and specializing in what was most vital — together with her continued activism.
“After all,” Richards wrote, “as my mom used to say: ‘Why ought to your life be nearly you?'”
As her well being continued to say no, Richards addressed the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
She spoke of the enjoyment of just lately turning into a grandmother, and the challenges many ladies have confronted for the reason that overturning of Roe v. Wade.
“One day, our kids and grandchildren could ask us, ‘When it was all on the road, what did you do?’ And the one acceptable reply is, all the things we might,” Richards mentioned.
In November 2024, President Joe Biden honored Cecile Richards with the Presidential Medal of Freedom throughout a personal ceremony on the White House. In a press release, Biden praised Richards for her “absolute braveness and conviction” and “an inspiring legacy that endures in her unbelievable household, the numerous lives she has made higher, and a Nation searching for the sunshine of equality, justice, and freedom.”