jews in the d
Activist Cecile Richards urges women
to take action and fi ght for progress.
Jodie Wittenberg
Heicklen, Fran Heicklen
and Cecile Richards
BARBARA LEWIS CONTRIBUTING WRITER
HELPING TO BRING CHANGE
Richards is proud of her accomplishments at Planned
Parenthood, a 100-year-old organization she first came
to know as a client during her college years. Under
her direction, the organization’s base of volunteers and
supporters grew from 2.5 million to 11 million. After
the 2016 election, Planned Parenthood added 700,000
new donors.
Richards regards her work on the Affordable Care
Act (ACA) as her signature achievement.
“There was no sweeter day in my entire lifetime,” she
said, than the day President Obama called her to tell
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October 25 • 2018
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her the ACA would include no-cost birth control.
“It’s hard to overstate how dramatic this change
was,” she said. “For the first time, women had access to
no-cost, effective birth control as well as to preventive
care.”
Now, possibly because of the ACA’s birth control
coverage, the number of abortions in the United States
is lower than any time since the procedure was legal-
ized in 1973, she said. The rate of teenage pregnancy
has declined as well.
Richards is also excited about new forms of birth
control that Planned Parenthood advocated for, includ-
ing a self-administered injection, now in clinical trials,
that provides protection for three months.
Since leaving Planned
Parenthood, Richards,
who lives in New
York and spends her
summers in Maine,
has published a book,
Make Trouble: Standing
Up, Speaking Out, and
Finding the Courage to
Lead, a combination
memoir and call to
action. She keeps busy
working on behalf of
progressive causes and
candidates.
As American women
look toward the 100th anniversary of their right to
vote, granted by Constitutional amendment in 1920,
they are still waiting for full equality, she said. She
noted that the U.S. is the only industrialized nation
that does not offer paid maternity leave and that also
SIMONANDSCHUSTER.COM
M
ore than half of the registered voters in the
U.S. are women, more than half of all college
students are women, and women account
for nearly half the workforce. And, if Cecile Richards is
right, women are about to come into their own at last.
Richards, who left Planned Parenthood earlier this
year after 12 years as its president, has been an activist
practically her entire life.
“I come from a long line of no-nonsense, get-it-
done Texas women,” said Richards, 61, who was born
in Waco and raised in Dallas. Her grandmother got up
from the bed where she was laboring in childbirth so
she could kill a chicken for her husband’s dinner.
Richards spoke to more than 430 women at the
National Council of Jewish Women’s annual Women of
Vision luncheon Oct. 11 at Adat Shalom Synagogue in
Farmington Hills.
Both her parents were activists for numerous causes.
“The dinner table was not where we ate but where we
sorted precinct lists,” she said.
With a degree from Brown University, Richards met
her husband, fellow organizer Kirk Adams, while both
were working as labor organizers in New Orleans. She
was living in Los Angeles with a young child and twins
on the way in 1990 when her mother, Ann Richards,
ran for Texas governor. Richards moved back to Texas
to run her campaign. Her mother, who served a single
term, was the first woman governor of the state — and
the most recent Democrat. Richards later worked
as deputy chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi
(D-CA).
has the highest rate of maternal death.
“Women want to do more than resist,” she said.
“They don’t want to be an afterthought or an accom-
modation.”
FIGHTING FOR PROGRESS
If women had political clout equal to their numbers,
she said, clean air and water would be a priority. There
would be an end to the epidemic of gun violence and
more support to keep families together.
Richards sees progress even in Texas, where women
have less control over their own bodies now than they
did when she lived there in 1990. A new Planned
Parenthood clinic opened in conservative Waco, and
the state sent a Latina woman to Congress.
“Women have been speaking up for centuries,” she
said, “and we’ve finally found the frequency where peo-
ple are hearing us.”
Like many women, Richards was enraged by the
controversial Senate hearings before the confirmation
of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. “Christine
Blasey Ford [who accused Kavanaugh of attempted
rape] spoke for millions of women, and we’re not going
to be silent anymore,” she said.
She wants to see women turn their rage into action
— and the most important action to take is voting.
“Marching is great, knitting ‘pussy’ hats, calling sen-
ators, sending postcards, those are all great, but voting
is the whole deal,” she said. Not voting could undo
the progress of the last 50 years. “Every bit of progress
we’ve made is on the line.”
She ended on a positive note. “We stand on the
shoulders of those who went before,” she said. “Now it’s
our turn. We are a movement, and we’re
unstoppable.” ■
“Marching is great; knitting ‘pussy’ hats, calling senators,
sending postcards, those are all great; but voting is the
whole deal. Every bit of progress we’ve made is on the line.”
— CECILE RICHARDS
BARBARA LEWIS
Making
Trouble