Cecile Richards, former Planned Parenthood president and progressive activist, died Jan. 20 after a battle with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. She was 67.
Richards, the daughter of the late Texas Gov. Ann Richards, left Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, in 2018 after 12 years at its helm. She was one of the country’s most well-known advocates of legal abortion. The role, as well as her advocacy for abortion, often placed her on the opposite side of political issues as pro-life advocacy groups, but many of them recognized her as a formidable political force.
Mary FioRito, a Catholic commentator and Cardinal Francis George Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told OSV News that Richards’ “skill as a public speaker and media made her something of a celebrity.”
“More than any other advocate of legal abortion in recent memory, Cecile Richards was known for her ability to craft a public image of Planned Parenthood that obscured the truth about its role as the nation’s largest abortion provider,” FioRito said. “She definitely had a role in polishing their image, and increasing their annual number of abortions in the process.”
Richards wrote in a 2022 essay for The New York Times, published a few months before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned its previous abortion precedent, that “if I have one regret from my time leading Planned Parenthood, it is that we believed that providing vital health care, with public opinion on our side, would be enough to overcome the political onslaught.”
“I underestimated the callousness of the Republican Party and its willingness to trade off the rights of women for political expediency,” Richards wrote at the time.
Former President Joe Biden awarded Richards the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Biden, who was previously the first Catholic vice president, and later became the second Catholic president in U.S. history, has been at odds with the U.S. bishops over his administration’s policies on abortion and gender identity despite their praise of him on other policy areas, such as those on refugees and climate. His policies on immigration drew mixed responses from them.
The Catholic Church teaches that all human life is sacred from conception to natural death, and therefore opposes direct abortion. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, church officials in the United States have reiterated the church’s concern for both mother and child. They have called to strengthen available support for those living in poverty or other causes that can push women toward having an abortion.
In a statement issued in the final hours of his presidency, Biden said Richards “fearlessly led us forward to be the America we say we are.”
“Carrying her mom’s torch for justice, she championed some of our Nation’s most important civil rights causes. She fought for the dignity of workers, defended and advanced women’s reproductive rights and equality, and mobilized our fellow Americans to exercise their power to vote,” Biden said, also expressing his condolences to her family.
Richards suffered from the same type of cancer behind the death of Biden’s son Beau.
FioRito said, “Yet we know that she is also facing the ‘particular judgement’ for her life now that she has gone to meet the Lord.”
“As Catholics, we know that we must pray for the dead, even those with whom we believe were responsible for the deaths of innocents,” she said. “Our faith demands it of us. We all want to be treated with mercy when we meet the Lord. If we truly want to ‘do unto others’ we have to pray for mercy for them.”
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