By Associated Press’s Holly Ramer
(AP) CONCORD, N.H. Cecile Richards, who led Planned Parenthood for 12 turbulent years and was a national advocate for women’s rights and access to abortion, has away. Her age was 67.
According to a statement from her family, Richards passed away on Monday at home with her devoted dog, Ollie, by her side.
According to the family, although our hearts are devastated tonight, words cannot express how much joy she brought into our lives.
Five years after leaving Planned Parenthood, Richards, the daughter of the late Texas Governor Ann Richards, received a diagnosis of glioblastoma, an aggressive kind of brain cancer, in 2023.
As the country’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood has long been a topic of discussion, even though it also offers birth control, cancer screenings, and STD testing at clinics around the country. Throughout her time as president and thereafter, Richards was a leading voice in resisting criticism.
She spent hours in 2015 responding to aggressive questions from Republican members of the U.S. House, who subsequently established an investigating panel to look into Planned Parenthood’s policy regarding abortion and fetal tissue. She issued a warning in 2021 that the lack of action by the US Supreme Court on Texas’ stringent abortion law would mean the end of judicial checks and balances on the matter. She also persisted in speaking out when the court overruled Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Our kids and grandkids might ask us one day, “What did you do when everything was on the line?” At the August Democratic National Convention, she stated. “Everything we could” is the only appropriate response.
Richards was referred to as a leader of the highest character by President Joe Biden, who presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November, on Monday.
In a statement, he said, Cecile boldly guided us to become the America we claim to be. She carried on her mother’s fight for justice by supporting some of the most significant civil rights issues in our country. She championed women’s equality and reproductive rights, battled for workers’ dignity, and inspired our countrymen to use their right to vote.
Richards was described as an unstoppable force by Alexis McGill Johnson, the current president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
“The movement Cecile built over decades will be able to help us meet the challenges we face as we continue to navigate uncharted territory,” she said. Without a doubt, Cecile would tell us that the greatest way to remember her is to stand up for Planned Parenthood patients nationwide, especially wearing pink link arms.
When Richards referred to Kamala Harris’ presidential candidacy as a celebration of women in her speech at the Democratic convention, she cited her mother and talked of the delight of becoming a grandma in 2023.
I hear America singing, as my mother, Governor Ann Richards, used to say. Women are unstoppable when they are allowed to follow their dreams and make their own life decisions.