Top abortion advocate Cecile Richards (shown) plans to step down as the head of Planned Parenthood after 12 years at the helm of the nation’s leading abortion provider, reported the Washington Post January 24.
While neither Richards nor Planned Parenthood has confirmed the news, a spokesperson for the abortion giant said that Richards planned to “to discuss 2018 and the next steps for Planned Parenthood’s future at the upcoming board meeting.”
The Post reported that rumors of Richards’ retirement from the “non-profit” have been circulating through the liberal political world for several months, and according to “people with knowledge of the decision, there was talk before the 2016 election that if Hillary Clinton won the presidency, Richards was ready to move on.”
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During Richard’s tenure Planned Parenthood proudly ended the lives of over 300,000 pre-born babies every year — 3.5 million abortions in all. During that same time frame Planned Parenthood raked in billions of dollars in tax revenues.
The abortion giant’s own annual report for 2016-17 shows that during that time it was responsible for 321,384 abortions while reaping $543.7 million in government subsidies — nearly 40 percent of the organization’s $1.46 billion budget.
Additionally, during that reporting period abortions made up 96 percent of Planned Parenthood’s pregnancy services, while prenatal services, miscarriage care, and adoption referrals accounted for only four percent. In fact, for every adoption referral Planned Parenthood made during 2016, it performed more than 82 abortions.
Pro-life leader Troy Newman suggested that Richards departure may have been expedited by President Trump’s aggressive stand against abortion compared to that of Obama, along with an ongoing investigation by the Department of Justice into Planned Parenthood practices.
“Planned Parenthood is under investigation by the Department of Justice for illegally trafficking in aborted baby remains and other crimes,” noted Newman, who heads the group Operation Rescue. “Could it be that Richards is getting out while she can, before indictments are handed down?”
David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress, the organizations whose investigation uncovered Planned Parenthood’s harvesting of baby body tissue for sale, recalled that during her tenure “Cecile Richards was the most devoted practitioner of Planned Parenthood’s ‘out of sight, out of mind’ mantra to cover up their barbaric abortion business from the public. As Planned Parenthood faces federal criminal investigation from the FBI and DOJ for selling aborted baby hearts, lungs, livers, and brains, Richards’ departure shows that the old strategy is no longer working — the secret is out that Planned Parenthood is a taxpayer-sponsored crime syndicate of industrial-scale child killing, and even Cecile Richards can no longer put a friendly spin on it.”
With the nation having a pro-life president and increasing numbers of states passing legislation designed to protect the unborn and their mothers, “Planned Parenthood is swimming against the tide of history,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser of the pro-life organization Susan B. Anthony List. “Its public favor is on the wane as pro-life momentum is on the rise. Her successor is left with an impossible job: sell a scandal-laden, failing organization that … provides pregnant women with prenatal care only 2.3 percent of the time.”
Putting a spiritual spin on Richards’ impending departure from the abortion giant, Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life commented, “I always say a prayer when someone like Cecile Richards has a change in her job, because it can be an opportunity for her to evaluate more clearly what she has been doing and why.” Pavone added, however, that the larger issue “is not the personnel who lead Planned Parenthood, but the corrupt and criminal enterprise that the organization itself is. Whoever serves it, in any capacity, is wounded and distorted in conscience. The whole enterprise needs to be closed.”
Photo of Cecile Richards: Lorie Shaull
