Cecile Richards, former president of Planned Parenthood, dies at age 67 | Planned Parenthood

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

“This morning our beloved Cecile passed away at home, surrounded by her family and her ever-loyal dog, Ollie,” That’s what Richards’ family writes in a statement. “Our hearts are broken today, but no words can do justice to the joy she brought to our lives.”

During her career, Richards became one of the biggest faces of American abortion rights, if not one of the most important American activists of the 21st century.

Under her watch, Planned Parenthood became a mainstay of Democratic politics, fought several congressional attempts to defund the organization, and tried to stem a flood of state-level efforts to restrict access to abortion.

Her mother, former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, was a political legend, but Richards herself became a household name in 2015 after anti-abortion activists released secret tapes of Planned Parenthood workers allegedly discussing the sale of fetal tissue. The tapes — which Planned Parenthood said were doctored — spurred several congressional and state investigations that failed to substantiate their content, and prompted U.S. House Republicans to grill Richards in an hours-long, much-publicized hearing.

After resigning from Planned Parenthood in 2018, Richards went on to found Supermajority, an organization dedicated to championing women’s leadership. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022—in a case involving the kind of state-level abortion restrictions that Richards sought to defeat—Richards launched Charley, a bot to help abortion seekers get accurate information about the procedure, and Abortion in America, a campaign to publicize abortion stories after Roe. 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’ve learned as a lifelong organizer is that there are no permanent wins and no permanent losses. We have to 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 challenging moments like the one we find ourselves in now. But what a joy and a privilege it is to be part of the long struggle to make our country a more just and hopeful place.”

Born on July 15, 1957 in Waco, Texas, Richards was raised primarily in Dallas and Austin. Her political involvement began early in life, as her parents were ardent progressives.

“They were into politics like other couples were into bowling,” Richards said NPR in 2014. “Every movement that came through town, whether it was the farm workers, the labor movement, the women’s movement, they were into it, and so were all their friends.”

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

Prior to the 1990 election, the family moved back to Texas to help Ann Richards run for governor. Known for her soaring silver hair and sharp wit—during her speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, Richards famously declared that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did “just backwards and in high heels”—Richards narrowly won , thanks to a coalition of women voters and voters of color. She then lost her re-election campaign in 1994 (to future US President George W Bush), but remained Cecile Richard’s political north star for the rest of Cecile’s life. A chapter of Cecile Richards’ best-selling 2018 memoir, Make Trouble, is titled: “What Would Ann Richards Do?”

After Ann Richards’ gubernatorial loss, Cecile attended a Texas education rally in 1995 where she saw right-wing activists on a crusade to provide students with information about sex education and LGBTQ+ rights. Struck by the rising power of the religious right, Richards founded the Texas Freedom Network, one of the most prominent progressive advocacy organizations in the Lone Star State.

Richards later moved to Washington DC, where she served as Nancy Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff before helping to found and lead the voting rights coalition America Votes.

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

By greatly expanding Planned Parenthood’s fundraising and organizing at the state level, especially in the face of repeated Republican efforts to defund it, Richards turned it into an organization that could capture votes as well as make or break political candidates. After 2010, when Democrats’ cross-party squabbling over abortion coverage nearly defeated the Affordable Care Act, Planned Parenthood worked to make support for abortion rights a key plank of the Democratic Party’s platform. Today, there is only one anti-abortion Democrat in Congress.

After being diagnosed with brain cancer in 2023Richards 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 Texas woman who sued after being denied a medically necessary abortion, Richards cast Texas’ ceremonial votes in support of Harris.

In their statement, Richards’ family said those wishing to honor Richards’ memory should remember something she often said during the last year of her life: “It’s hard not to imagine that one day future generations asking, ‘When there was so much at stake for our country, what did you do?’ The only acceptable answer is: ‘Anything we could’.”