Cecile Richards, an abortion rights activist who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by former President Joe Biden in November, has died.
Richards served as President of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America from 2006 to 2018. Following her departure from the organization, she cofounded the political action group Supermajority. Given the issue she devoted her life to, the daughter of former Texas Governor Ann Richards was never far from politics.
To learn more about how Richards’ work inspired action in New York, WAMC's Lucas Willard spoke with Chelly Hegan, CEO of Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood.
I would say first and foremost, Cecile was a incredibly charismatic leader, and she really brought Planned Parenthood into the public space and also into view for younger supporters and more activist-level supporters. Where Planned Parenthood had always been a very trusted name in high quality healthcare, and we're really, really proud of that, I think, under Cecile leadership, and of course, the sort of beginning of these crazy times, she really recognized that it was important for us to be a voice for multiple generations of people who are affected by access to reproductive health care. And I was so grateful, she came and spoke at least once here in the Capital Region at one of our events. And she's just an incredibly inspirational coalition-building leader, and that probably comes from her background in political organizing as well as labor organizing. So, she was an organizer at heart, and I think that she brought that energy into our movement in a way that is still going strong.
Yeah, I wanted to ask you a little bit more about that, if her example at the national level of the organization did directly inspire any particular actions or programs with Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood.
I think that what Cecile did…so it's funny because I started 18 years ago at Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood, and it was the same year that Cecile started as president of the national office. I started in a HR role. I had a role under our previous leader, Pat McGowan, and I remember going to our very first meeting as a leadership team, and the Vanity Fair cover had just come out. And when Cecile was first hired at Planned Parenthood, Vanity Fair did a cover of Cecile sitting at a big, sort of, like old white man kind of business desk completely covered with babies, like babies crawling all over the place. And it was just such a really, I think, a radical departure from how Planned Parenthood had presented itself for so long, like we are here for all kinds of women, all kinds of people making all kinds of choices about their pregnancy, including having healthy birth outcomes. And she really ushered that in. I think that has been really important to us at Upper Hudson, because we have seen, in some ways, it freed us up to see ourselves as primarily a provider of care for folks who fall between the gaps. And so that's been inspirational for us in terms of expanding our abortion access, of course. But then over time, we also expanded into gender affirming care, and we continue to expand into behavioral health care, and now we're doing a lot more outreach around menopause care. And all of these are areas that are…all these are types of care that are both stigmatized and marginalized and certainly not available to people who don't have money. And so, I think Cecile was a real inspiration to us and our affiliate to say, “we're Planned Parenthood.” And Planned Parenthood means a lot more things than just contraception. It means that planning for your future, regardless of who you are, what color you are, where you come from, how much money you have, all of those things should not factor into your ability to pave your future for yourself, and our services are reflective of that, and they continue to grow and change as our community's needs continue to grow and change.
The Supreme Court's decision of Dobbs V. Jackson came after Cecile left Planned Parenthood as head of the national organization. How has her example and those organizing efforts that you've talked about, prepared organizations like Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood for a second Trump term?
Well, that that's something that I have to practice conscious breathing on when I think about it. I think that with the Dobbs ruling and what happened then, and certainly when Cecile departed from the national office, she didn't go in to retirement. She started Supermajority, which was a real reaction to the first Trump administration. And it was saying, we have, we have a supermajority in this country of people who support abortion rights, and we also have a supermajority who support women's rights. And so, she started that organization as a as a political action to encourage more people to run, to help with organizing in places that needed it the most. And then she went on to do even more work in the abortion space. So, she had a whole movement called Unstoppable, I think they were called. So, she really just worked at coming up with more and more ways for people to become active and sort of own the narrative in a different way. I think that what has happened at Planned Parenthood Federation is obviously one of the things that's really different about Planned Parenthood than many other feminist organizations is that we're direct care providers, and so we're struggling with the effects of Dobbs in a very specific way that's different than just a political and organizing organ group would have to face. So we are facing the direct challenges that this new Trump administration, is going to face us with, specifically when it comes to continuing to erode access to abortion, even in places where it's currently legal and safe, like it is in New York. I think those things are all part of her legacy. And certainly, Alexis McGill Johnson, who is the current president at upper or at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, takes incredibly seriously, which is how we balance our political and activist work with the day-to-day work of direct delivery of care that the affiliates do across the country. And that's not an easy balance, and we are certainly, all of us, struggling. I know here in New York, the biggest concern we have right now is funding. And you know, we are providing a greater number of services than ever before to people who need us more than ever before, certainly as immigrants in our country are attacked from the Trump administration, we're going to have even more people who we have to find ways to care for who are undocumented. Those challenges are very specific and actually quite…they're just sort of everyday, tactical choices on how do we make sure that our doors stay open, that we're funded at a level that allows us to maintain our staff and maintain our standard of care for everyone who needs us going into the future. That's like the real, sort of concrete, everyday challenge in New York, and I think that challenge is very similar in in other quote, unquote, blue states across the country. That's different than, I would say, the activism forward leadership that Cecile provided, because we didn't have challenges at quite the same level to our everyday access to care that we're facing now when she was in her leadership position.
