On inauguration day this year, while we focused our attention on President Trump’s second swearing in ceremony, we also noted the passing of long-time reproductive rights and progressive leader Cecile Richards. Richards died two years after her diagnosis of glioblastoma brain cancer.
Richards served as president of Planned Parenthood from 2006-2018. She was the face and the voice of women’s rights for most of her life. In her 12 years leading Planned Parenthood, the organization’s donor base and volunteers grew from 3 million to 11 million.
Cecile Richards was born in Waco, Texas on July 15, 1957 to her mother Ann, who was Governor of Texas 1991-95 and her father David who was a lawyer specializing in civil rights, voting rights and labor union cases.
She was the oldest of four children and she took to political issues at an early age. She was an honorary page in the Texas Legislature at age 13. And in ninth grade Cecile was suspended from school after she wore a black arm band to school in protest of the Vietnam War.
Richards graduated from Brown University in 1980 with a degree in History and began a career as a labor organizer and met her husband Kirk Adams organizing hotel workers in New Orleans. Richards said that she “majored in history, but minored in agitating”. She skipped walking at her college graduation and instead unfurled a “Free South Africa” banner pushing Brown to divest the university’s holdings in Apartheid-era South Africa, according to her obituary in the Texas Tribune.
Richards and her husband returned to Texas to help her mother Ann run as Democratic candidate for Texas Governor. Ann served one term as governor but was defeated by Republican George W. Bush who succeeded her as governor.
Cecile served as deputy chief of staff to California Rep. Nancy Pelosi in 2001 when Pelosi was minority whip in Congress and eventually ended up leading Planned Parenthood. The Texas Tribune said that Richards described her work at Planned Parenthood as a “natural extension” of the labor organizing work she did after her college graduation.
“The same folks I organized in hotels in New Orleans, or janitors in Los Angeles, or nursing home workers in East Texas, they’re the folks that rely on Planned Parenthood, too,” she told Brown Alumni magazine in 2018. “People come to us for reproductive health care but they need a lot of other things. They need a living wage. They need child care that’s affordable. If they are immigrants, they need us to stand with them. To me that’s the exciting thing about the organization.”
After leaving Planned Parenthood, Richards helped found Supermajority, a group that works to get more women involved in Democratic politics and at the time of her death she was working on Charley, a chatbot she co-founded in 2024 that helps abortion seekers find help.
Two months before her death, President Joe Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the country, to Cecile Richards. “Through her work to lift up the dignity of workers, defend and advance women’s reproductive rights and equality, and mobilize Americans to exercise their power to vote, she has carved an inspiring legacy,” Biden said at the private award ceremony.
Cecile Richards leaves behind her husband Kirk Adams and three children Lily, and twins Hannah and Daniel and one grandchild.
When we look back on American Women throughout our nation’s history, a few stand out in retrospect, Cecile Richards (and her mother Ann) shine as trailblazers who promoted women in the workplace and fought for women’s reproductive rights. We can look back on Richard’s appearances on cable news shows as evidence of her broad reach. She spoke for all people needing help, not just pregnant women or women in search of healthcare. Richards’ voice is missed every day of President Trump’s second term.