Cecile Richards, a nationwide chief for abortion entry and girls’s rights who led Deliberate Parenthood for 12 tumultuous years, has died. She was 67.
Richards died Monday at dwelling in New York “surrounded by household and her ever-loyal canine, Ollie,” her household mentioned in a press release.
“Our hearts are damaged right this moment however no phrases can do justice to the enjoyment she delivered to our lives,” the household mentioned.
Richards, the daughter of the late Texas Gov. Ann Richards, was identified with glioblastoma, an aggressive type of mind most cancers, in 2023, 5 years after she left Deliberate Parenthood.
Although Deliberate Parenthood additionally gives contraception, most cancers screenings, and testing for sexually transmitted ailments at clinics nationwide, its standing because the nation’s main abortion supplier has lengthy made it a goal of social conservatives. Beneath Richards’ management, the group gained in membership, donor help, and political clout, and she or he performed a outstanding function in pushing again in opposition to critics.
In 2015, she spent hours answering hostile questions from Republican U.S. Home members who later created an investigative panel to probe Deliberate Parenthood’s abortion and fetal-tissue insurance policies. In 2021, she warned that the U.S. Supreme Court docket’s inaction on Texas’ restrictive abortion legislation might sign the tip of judicial checks and balances on the problem. And after the court docket overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, she continued to talk out.
“In the future, our youngsters and grandchildren could ask us, ‘When it was all on the road, what did you do?’” she mentioned on the Democratic Nationwide Conference in August. “The one acceptable reply is, ‘All the things we might.’”
Born on July 15, 1957, in Waco, Texas, Richards earned a bachelor of arts diploma in historical past from Brown College, the place she unfurled a banner from a second ground window throughout her 1980 commencement ceremony to protest the college’s investments in South Africa.
“One of many extra widespread buttons of the day was ‘Query Authority,’ and I really feel like we did that each single day, and it completely set me on my path,” she mentioned in a 2017 handle to graduates. “Brown instilled in me the assumption that anybody of us can change the world and that, actually, it is type of what’s anticipated of us.”
After school, she labored as an organizer for low-wage employees in a number of states earlier than returning to Texas to assist along with her mom’s 1990 gubernatorial marketing campaign. In 2004, she was a founding father of America Votes, and earlier than becoming a member of Deliberate Parenthood, served as deputy chief of workers for Home Democratic Chief Nancy Pelosi.
“It was my privilege to work instantly with Cecile for a few years and to I’ve a front-row seat to her sharp mind, strategic considering and relentless effectiveness,” Pelosi mentioned in a press release Monday. “As she ascended to different management roles, we by no means stopped working collectively to defend the rights of girls and dealing households.”
Outgoing President Joe Biden, who awarded Richards the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November, on Monday referred to as her a “chief of utmost character.”
“Cecile fearlessly led us ahead to be the America we are saying we’re,” he mentioned in a press release issued about an hour earlier than Donald Trump was sworn in as president. “Carrying her mother’s torch for justice, she championed a few of our Nation’s most necessary civil rights causes. She fought for the dignity of employees, defended and superior ladies’s reproductive rights and equality, and mobilized our fellow People to train their energy to vote.”
After leaving Deliberate Parenthood, Richards served as co-chair of American Bridge, which helps liberal causes and conducts opposition analysis on Republicans. Final fall, she launched a challenge that used social media to emphasise private tales concerning the impression of abortion bans and restrictions.
Alexis McGill Johnson, present president of Deliberate Parenthood Federation of America, referred to as Richards an “indomitable pressure.”
“As we proceed to navigate uncharted territory, we will meet the challenges we face largely due to the motion Cecile constructed over a long time,” she mentioned. “I do know, no doubt, that Cecile would inform us the easiest way to honor her reminiscence is to go well with up — ideally in pink — hyperlink arms, and battle like hell for Deliberate Parenthood sufferers throughout the nation.”
Richards is survived by her husband, two daughters, a son and one grandson.
In her Democratic conference speech, Richards described the enjoyment of turning into a grandmother in 2023 and referred to as Kamala Harris’ presidential marketing campaign a “celebration of girls.”
“As my mom, Gov. Ann Richards, would say, ‘I hear America singing,'” she mentioned. “When ladies are free to make their very own choices about their lives and to observe our desires, we’re unstoppable.”
