Cecile Richards, Ex-Leader of Planned Parenthood, Dead at 67

Cecile Richards, a feminist and activist for women's rights and the longtime president of Planned Parenthood, died Monday at the age of 67. "This morning our beloved Cecile passed away at home, surrounded by her family and her ever-loyal dog, Ollie. Our hearts are broken today, but no words can do justice to the joy she brought to our lives," Richards' family announced in a statement, per CNN. Her family said that Richards died of glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer, which she was diagnosed with in 2023, per the Texas Tribune.

Richards, the daughter of late Texas Gov. Ann Richards, in 1996 founded the Texas Freedom Network, a nonprofit social justice organization. But it was her time leading Planned Parenthood—from 2006 to 2018, the longest any individual had helmed the reproductive health care and sex ed organization—that put her on the national map, per the 19th. Under Richards' tenure, Planned Parenthood became more closely tied to the Democratic Party in its push for abortion rights, and Richards herself started putting her own voice out there more after the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade. "If I have one regret from my time leading Planned Parenthood, it is that we believed that providing vital health care, with public opinion on our side, would be enough to overcome the political onslaught," Richards wrote in a 2022 op-ed in the New York Times.

More recently, Richards had helped launch Abortion in America, an online portal that shared stories of people's experiences trying to access abortion after the fall of Roe v. Wade. She recently told the 19th that she expected the fight to reinstate abortion rights to be a protracted one. "In all honesty, I fear it will take us a long time to restore the rights we once had," she said at the time. "For people who face challenges based on race, geography, income, and more, these inequities are deep-seated, intersectional, and much more difficult to eradicate. We need to be ready for a multiyear fight." Richards is survived by her husband and three children. (More Cecile Richards stories.)