Former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards dead at 67

Brian Niemietz, New York Daily News on Jan 20, 2025

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Former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, daughter of late Texas Gov. Ann Richards, is dead at 67.

News of the human rights activist’s death was shared by Richards’ family on her Instagram page Monday morning.

“This morning our beloved Cecile passed away at home, surrounded by her family and her ever-loyal dog, Ollie,” that notice said. “Our hearts are broken today but no words can do justice to the joy she brought to our lives.”

Richards, who lived in New York, began battling brain cancer in 2023. Her family thanked the physicians and who aided Richards since that diagnoses. They also posted a quote attributed to the women’s healthcare champion.

“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.’”

Richards wrote in January 2024 that she was feeling well after several treatments and vacations. In that online post, she said having cancer hasn’t “filled her with profound insights on life,” but it reminded her there’s nothing more important that continuing women’s rights to reproductive healthcare.

Richards served as Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s president from 2006 to 2018. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November 2023.

She’s survived by her husband Kirk Adams and their three children.

The Texas native wrote about women in leadership in a 2018 article for The Progressive:

“My mother, Ann Richards, grew up in a time when most women didn’t have many options; you could be a teacher, a secretary, a domestic worker, or a nurse, and that was pretty much it,” she said. “My kids, though, grew up seeing women in charge. Our life was such a matriarchy that when my son, Daniel, was three he said, ‘When I grow up, I want to be a woman.'”

Once a Girl Scout herself, Richards recalled forming the Future Women Presidents club with her daughter Hannah because she felt activities like selling cookies were trivial compared to some of the skills highlighted in groups for boys. Richards also recalled taking her children to women’s basketball games at the University of Texas when they were young.

She told Texas-based news outlet The 19th she “felt powerful” voting for Kamala Harris and was excited that many young voters would cast their first ballot in a presidential election for a woman. Richards spoke in support of Harris at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where she said she’d recently become a grandmother and criticized the 2022 reversal of the Roe v Wade ruling that made abortion legal in 1973.

“Politics should never stand in the way of anyone’s healthcare,” she said.

Harris lost the presidential race to Republican candidate Donald Trump, who was schedule to be sworn into office hours after Richards died. He boasted about helping overturn Roe v. Wade during his first term in office, but claims to oppose a national abortion ban.