DemDaily: The Indomitable Cecile Richards
January 23, 2025
The national Democratic and progressive movement lost one of its true champions this week with the passing of Cecile Richards -- the dynamic former president of Planned Parenthood and a leading voice for social justice and women's rights.
| Richards, 67, was diagnosed in 2023 with glioblastoma – an aggressive type of brain cancer that is incurable. It is the same cancer that took the lives of Ted Kennedy and Beau Biden. |
Richards grew up in the lap of politics as the eldest of four children born to legendary former Texas Governor Ann Richards (1991-1995) and renowned civil rights and labor attorney David Richards.
As a teenager, she campaigned for causes and candidates, including Sarah Weddington, the attorney who argued the landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade, who was elected to the Texas state legislature in 1972.
Richards graduated with a degree in history from Brown University in 1980 but skipped the commencement ceremony to protest the university’s investments in apartheid South Africa.
She started as a labor organizer for service workers, running union campaigns for garment workers, nursing home workers, and janitors. Cecile met her husband, Kirk Adams, whom she married in 1985, while organizing hotel workers in New Orleans.
When her mother announced her bid for Governor of Texas in 1990, they moved to Austin to help with the campaign. Their four-year-old daughter and Cecile, pregnant with twins, attended the inauguration.
Cecile worked for the Turner Foundation and was a longtime board member of the Ford Foundation, a global private foundation that advances human welfare. She later joined the board of Let America Vote, dedicated to ending voter suppression. In 1996, she founded the Texas Freedom Network to counter the Christian right.
In Washington, she served as Deputy Chief of Staff to US House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, who praised Richards' "sharp intellect, strategic thinking and relentless effectiveness."
| “Politics and public service were in Cecile’s DNA – and she will be remembered as a commanding leader in her own right, whose good works have improved countless lives all across the country." - Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi |
In 2004, Richards helped found and served as the first President of America Votes, which serves as a coalition hub, today working with more than 400 national and state-based partner organizations to advance progressive policies, increase voter turnout for the Democratic Party, and "protect every American’s right to vote."
In 2006, she became president of both the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and its affiliated Planned Parenthood Action Fund (PPAF), overseeing the largest provider of reproductive and women’s sexual health care services education in the country.
During her tenure, Cecile reinvigorated the then 90-year old organization, significantly expanding its national and state operations and services. She grew its base of supporters and volunteers from 2.5 to 11 million, while building a sophisticated and powerful political organization.
From the time President Donald Trump was first elected in 2016 until early 2018, Planned Parenthood added 700,000 new donors, a record for so short a period.
Richards also navigated PPFA through a period of unrelenting attacks by conservatives, particularly under the administrations of President George W. Bush and President Trump’s first term.
She successfully fended off attempts by Republican-controlled state legislatures to pass laws to restrict access to abortion or to cut its funding. The most extreme proposals came from her home state of Texas.
Cecile was catapulted to national fame when, in 2015, she was called to testify before the US House Committee on Oversight and Accountability after an aggressive media campaign by anti-abortion organizations falsely accused PPFA of selling fetal tissue.
Over five hours of questioning, a tough but elegantly composed Richards turned the forum to her advantage -- shining a light on the work of Planned Parenthood providers and the essential care more than two million people receive from Planned Parenthood health centers each year.
Her testimony drew hundreds of new supporters for Planned Parenthood, and subsequent polls showed that the vast majority of people support the organization.
| Cecile was named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2011 and 2012. She was also awarded the Roger N. Baldwin Medal of Liberty, the ACLU’s highest honor, acknowledging individuals who have made lifetime contributions to the advancement of civil liberties, and in 2010. the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship. In November 2024, President Joe Biden awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the nation’s top civilian awards. |
After 12 years as the public face of women’s reproductive rights, Cecile left Planned Parenthood but continued her fight for women’s rights and gender justice.
In 2018 she released her memoir, "Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead," and in April, 2019, she co-founded Supermajority, a women’s political action group that seeks to train and mobilize women to be organizers, activists, and leaders. She partnered with Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza and Ai-jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance.
Undeterred, despite her diagnosis, in 2024, she co-founded Abortion in America, dedicated to uplifting the voices of those denied health care because of state abortion bans.
| “It’s not hard to imagine future generations one day asking: ‘When there was so much at stake for our country, what did you do?’ The only acceptable answer is: ‘Everything we could.’” - Cecile Richards |
It was a privilege to know her.
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Sources: New York Times, TIME, The Guardian, The Atlantic, FB, Planned Parenthood, the 19th, ACLU
