A fighter for women’s and workers’ rights died on Monday after a serious illness. She inspires us for future work.
Cecil Richards
(Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
We are all in a huge debt to Cecile Richards – for endless reasons. Perhaps least of all: passing just hours before Donald Trump’s inauguration, at the far-too-young age of 67, she made the day another cause for reverence and remembrance rather than a violent orange spectacle. For those of us who believe in justice and goodness, today was already a holy day, a celebration of the birthday of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., one of the leading beacons of progress in this country when it comes to human rights. Cecil is now forever associated with that day.
I’m not sure what I “believe” in a big sense, but I believe that Richards left us on Monday to remind us to continue her work for women and workers, and to do our best to set up a misogynist monster like us instead focus on helping their victims. Which ultimately might include most of us.
In the summer of 2023, Richards was struck by a diagnosis of glioblastoma, a very aggressive form of brain tumor. Instead of stepping down to focus on her health, the longtime head of Planned Parenthood has launched a new organization, Abortion in Americato tell the stories of women who suffer and even lose their lives as a result Dobbs solution.
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Caitlin Joshua, a miscarriage survivor from Louisiana who was denied proper care because of the abortion ban, told me this when I asked her about Richards last year: “What’s it like working with Cecile Richards? It’s such an honor and I often have to pinch myself because I can’t believe I’ve had the privilege of working so closely with someone who is such an activist and pioneer in the abortion rights movement.”
Joshua continued and articulated what was so extraordinary about Richards’ pioneering work: “I was completely blown away by her ability to understand this work through the lens of black maternal health and the adversities that people of color face every day as additional barriers to trying get access to abortions.’
Frances Kiesling, founder of Catholics for Choice, told me, “Cecil was an incredible woman. She managed Planned Parenthood wisely; before that term and after, she worked for democracy, women and people in need.”
Yes, she did.
First done by Cecile Richards Nation‘s progressive honor board in 2015 A longtime labor organizer — she ran the Justice for Janitors campaign — she became president of Planned Parenthood in 2006. and thus the most public face in reproductive health. Just in 2015, she looked down on ill-informed congressmen who insisted the organization was selling baby parts and stood up when a gunman attacked a clinic in Colorado Springs and killed three people. “What happened in Colorado Springs broke our hearts — and made our spines stronger.” she said.
With such an indomitable backbone, Richards transformed Planned Parenthood. It was a widely respected women’s care organization as well as a lobbying abortion service. Richards sharpened his political focus.
“When she started at Planned Parenthood, it was a service provider with a pretty outgoing political apparatus,” says Gina Glantz, a friend of Richards and a longtime political and labor activist. “She was determined to make it a strength for women, establishing the power of the institution and its mission. During her time in office, women’s reproductive health and abortion, in particular, became hallmarks of not only the progressive but also the American agenda.”
When a right-wing activist took over the breast cancer organization Susan G. Komen, Glantz recalls, Richards “refused to turn it into a catfight. She turned it into an educational tool to increase understanding (of Planned Parenthood).” And she won.
Alexis McGill Johnson, the current PPFA leader, recalls Richards as his mentor. “I’m sitting here because of her,” she told me. At the behest of Richards, she became a member of the council, and later headed it. “I felt like how could I step in as chairman of the board? She gave me the confidence to do it. It will be one of her greatest legacies.”
Richards turned Planned Parenthood into a political powerhouse. Not so long ago, “nobody wanted our support,” Johnson recalls.
“She fearlessly pushed political leaders to understand the consequences of denying women’s rights and confronted Republicans who brought her before their vile House committee, which was determined to undermine her and PPFA’s reputation,” Glantz says. “It did just the opposite. Candidates who had shied away from communication in the past sought endorsements.”
I personally watched this with surprise.
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Richards left Planned Parenthood in 2018 and quickly co-founded Supermajority with domestic worker organizer Ai-Jen Poo and Black Lives Matter leader Alicia Garza to channel the energy of women voters and politicians who emerged in the 2018 midterm elections — anti- Trump’s “blue wave”.
But the Supreme Court in 2022 Dobbs the decision, which eliminated a 50-year-old constitutional right to choose, brought her back to abortion activism. She started abortion in America and gave the last months to this worthy project.
I last spoke to Cecile in early December, for my Nation an article about how the women’s vote failed Kamala Harris. She told me this: “Democrats have a problem with clarity. And we have to take some of that out of politics. That’s why we’re doing this project: it’s not the political stories of Caitlin and others. These are human stories that happen to different people…
“And I think if we don’t continue to repeat what’s happening as a result of these abortion bans, we’re going to have women in half the country who can’t do anything about it. Even if we won the (presidential) election, you would have 22 states where women would wake up in the same situation. We knew that no matter what the outcome was, there are women out there who are facing such difficult circumstances and we just can’t stop telling their stories.”
Richards added: “Resources dry up after an election, even though the stories are as important as ever.”
Please change this, funders. And make a trip in her honor.
On this day, of all days, I would like to remember the words that Richards spoke so often last year, that her family wanted us to remember when they told the world of her death this morning: “It’s not hard to imagine the future generations will one day ask, “What did you do when so much was at stake for our country?” The only acceptable answer is “Anything we could.”
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