Cecile Richards was a social activist who worked as president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America from 2006 through 2018.¹ As president of Planned Parenthood, Richards built the organization’s political and advocacy arm from nearly non-existent into a political powerhouse.² Under Richards, the number of abortions provided annually by Planned Parenthood increased by 56,000 (21%)³ and the amount of annual federal funding given to the organization grew by nearly $200 million (58%).⁴⁵ In 2018, Richards announced she would step down as Planned Parenthood’s president. ⁶ After stepping down, Richards created the feminist organizing group Supermajority and the media project Abortion in America. ⁷ Richards died in January 2025 from cancer. ⁸

Prior to her work for Planned Parenthood, Richards served as the deputy chief of staff to then-minority whip Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)f.⁹ She also founded a number of influential liberal organizations. In 2003-2004 she co-founded and presided over America Coming Together¹⁰ and America Votes, ¹¹ two of the “527” political committees that were created to support the Presidential campaign of then-U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-MA). Together these two organizations coordinated hundreds of millions of dollars ¹² in spending among a large number of liberal donors and influence organizations including George Soros, Peter Lewis, the AFL-CIO, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, and the American Federation of Teachers.¹³¹⁴ Richards also founded the Texas Freedom Network to support abortion in Texas while opposing the agenda of the state’s religious conservatives. ¹²

Richards also spent nearly a decade as a national union organizer, most notably running the SEIU’s “justice for janitors” campaign in Los Angeles. ¹²

Richards was invited to President Barack Obama’s White House 39 times,¹⁵ and is credited with firming up the Democratic Party’s embrace of abortion rights “as a central part of the party’s platform.”² Time named Richards one of the most influential people in the world during President Obama’s first term.¹

Background and Early Career

Cecile Richards was born in Waco, Texas in 1957. Her father, Dave Richards, was one of the most active labor-union lawyers in Texas, and her mother, Ann Richards, was a politician who is (as of 2025) the most recent Democrat to serve as Governor of Texas. ¹⁴¹²

Before college, Cecile and her mother worked for Sara Weddington’s 1972 campaign for the Texas State House. Weddington came to fame as the lawyer who successfully argued Roe v. Wade before the U.S. Supreme Court.¹⁶

Cecile met her husband Kirk Adams while the two were working as union organizers for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)¹⁷ and the couple lived in New York City.¹⁸ They had three children. Lily Adams, the oldest, has served as the press secretary for U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA)¹⁷ and worked for Hillary Clinton’s and Kamala Harris’s presidential campaigns. ^{19 20}

Political Activism

Labor Union Career

While at Brown University, Cecile Richards supported a janitors’ strike, helping her into a career as a union organizer.  Beginning in 1980,¹⁴ she traveled the country running a number of union organizing campaigns for garment workers in the Rio Grande Valley,  nursing home employees in East Texas, and hotel workers in New Orleans.¹²

In the late 1980s, Richards led the SEIU’s “Justice for Janitors” campaign, which unionized and demanded higher pay for cleaning crews in Los Angeles.¹²

In 1990 Richards and her family moved to Austin so she could run her mother’s gubernatorial campaigns.^{14 21} After her mother lost re-election in 1994 (to future President George W. Bush), Cecile created the Texas Freedom Network, a political advocacy group, ²¹ to combat religious conservative “issues, organizations, money and leaders” and to combat the pro-life agenda. ¹²

Nancy Pelosi Staffer

In 2002 and 2003 Richards served as deputy chief of staff to Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) during Pelosi’s time as Democratic whip in the House of Representatives. ⁹ Pelosi touted Richards’s efforts saying, “Cecile helped me set up the whip office […] Everyone knows she’s politically astute and a wonderful communicator, but she’s also a great administrator. She could be the President.”¹⁷

Political Action Committees

In 2003, Richards co-founded America Coming Together (ACT),¹⁰ a pro-Democratic 527 political action committee that raised about $200 million from George Soros, Peter Lewis, and a variety of Hollywood moguls.¹³ Other prominent liberals involved in ACT included Ellen Malcolm of EMILY’s List, Steve Rosenthal of the AFL-CIO, and former Clinton White House operative Harold Ickes.¹³

In 2004, Richards founded and then worked as the president of the 527 group ¹¹ “a Washington-based coalition of 32 of the biggest, richest, and most influential unions and liberal interest groups in the country.”¹⁴ America Votes’ members included ACT, the AFL-CIO, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, the Sierra Club, the NAACP, the League of Conservation Voters, Planned Parenthood, and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). ¹⁴

America Votes coordinated its member organizations’ get-out-the-vote efforts, which together spent about $350 million during the 2004 presidential campaign ¹² to supplement the Democratic effort in support of John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. ²²

Planned Parenthood

Also see Planned Parenthood Federation of America (Nonprofit)

From 2006 through 2018, Cecile Richards worked as president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.¹ In January 2018, Richards announced her intention to leave Planned Parenthood, vowing to remain a constant advocate for the organization’s liberal policy agenda.²³

During her time at the head of Planned Parenthood, “Richards greatly expanded the organization’s fundraising and organizing capabilities — and helped raise its profile through celebrity-oriented campaigns and increased political participation.”² According to Time, when Richards took the reins at Planned Parenthood in 2006, “the organization didn’t even have a centralized website.” However, under her leadership it gained “much more political heft” that resulted in President Barack Obama mentioning Planned Parenthood during his 2012 presidential debates.²

According to Buzzfeed, Richards’ and Planned Parenthood’s advocacy could largely be credited with the Democratic Party’s embrace of abortion rights “as a central part of the party’s platform.”²

Organizational Growth

Under Richards’ leadership, the number of abortion services provided annually grew by over 56,000 procedures (21%) from 2005 through 2017.³

Richards presided over massive growth in the organization; its volunteers and supporters reportedly grew from 2.5 million to 11 million.²⁴ The group’s annual revenues grew by $560 million (62%) to $1.46 billion in 2016. Notably, Planned Parenthood’s national office budget under Richards jumped from $67.5 million in 2006 to $437 million in 2017.^{4 25}

Additionally, the amount of annual government money that Planned Parenthood received grew by nearly $200 million (58%) under Richards. ^{4 26}

Political Support

Shortly after taking over as president of Planned Parenthood Richards delivered an emphatic speech where she pledged “to swing the vote in 2006, 2008 and 2010” and to use the power gained from those elections to influence legislative policy.  She specifically promised that under her watch “Planned Parenthood [was] going to become more political” so that she could beat back pro-life policy opponents.²⁷

In 2010 Richards started the super PAC Planned Parenthood Votes.²⁸ Between 2012 and 2016 Planned Parenthood Votes spent over $35 million.²⁹

In 2008, Richards called Barack Obama “a passionate advocate for women’s rights” and touted Planned Parenthood’s endorsement of his candidacy.³⁰ In 2016, Richards was a key supporter of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, touting that there had never been a Presidential ticket more committed to Planned Parenthood’s pro-abortion agenda than that of Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine (D-VA).³¹ In total, Planned Parenthood’s various entities spent at least $38 million to elect Democrats in 2016.³²

Lobbying and Policy

Under Richards’ leadership Planned Parenthood’s lobbying spending grew from a low of $365,000 in 2006 to a high of $1.9 million in 2011.³³ In total under Richards, Planned Parenthood Federation of America spent over $13 million on lobbying.³³

Similarly, the budget for the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the organization’s formal 501(c)(4) lobbying arm, grew from $4.3 million the year before Richards took over to  $24.8 million in 2015.³⁴

When asked to prioritize “the most important part of Planned Parenthood’s work,” Richards said that the organization’s lobbying efforts were just as important as its provision of healthcare services.³⁵

In 2010 Richards celebrated the passage of Obamacare with President Barack Obama, and she proclaimed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s efforts to pass the legislation had been “heroic.”³⁶ Richards said she was “most proud” of securing the mandate that required all insurers to provide birth control at no cost to patients. ¹⁷

In June 2013, then-Texas state Senator Wendy Davis (D) launched a filibuster to derail a pro-life bill. Richards organized a crowd of thousands outside the Texas State Capitol and helped get hundreds of pro-abortion supporters inside where their noisemaking and demonstrations helped run the clock out on the session before the Republican-controlled chamber could hold a vote. However, the pro-life legislation passed in a special session. ⁸

In 2017, Richards, flanked by House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and the House’s Pro-Choice Caucus, pledged to fight against Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and launched the “I Stand With Planned Parenthood” campaign.³⁷

Congressional Testimony

In 2015, after a series of videos released by the pro-life Center for Medical Progress seemed to show that Planned Parenthood was selling fetal tissue for profit in a dubiously legal manner, Richards testified before Congress defending her organization. She said she was “proud” of Planned Parenthood’s provision of fetal tissue while trying to minimize “the organ donations as a small part of [Planned Parenthood’s] work.”³⁸

Post-Planned Parenthood

Richards has stated that, after her departure from Planned Parenthood, she plans to “pour herself into the midterm elections, fund-raising and campaigning for Democrats”²⁴ and to increase and organize the number of women who run for office and who vote.³⁹

She also wrote a book entitled Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead — My Life Story, published in April 2018.²⁴ Hillary Clinton praised the book calling it “practical advice and inspirations for aspiring leaders everywhere” and then-U.S. Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) called it a “must-read.⁴⁰

In September 2021, Richards warned that the U.S. Supreme Court decision not to hear a case on a strict pro-life law Texas adopted could mean the end of abortion as a national right guaranteed by the U.S. Supreme Court. Richards made her prediction on the one-year anniversary of the death of left-of-center U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She warned that the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court not to hear the case gave Republican governors across the country a roadmap to follow to regulate abortion. ⁴¹

Richards also created the chatbot Charley, which connects people to pro-abortion information. She also became co-chair of the PAC American Bridge 21^st Century. ⁴²

Supermajority

In 2019, Cecile Richards joined with Ai-Jen Poo of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and Alicia Garza, a founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, to create Supermajority. The goal of Supermajority was to get left-leaning women to work together regardless of race on left-of-center issues important to them. ⁴³

During the COVID-19 epidemic, Supermajority had to adapt its focus by highlighting issues related to the epidemic. The group provided training and support for left-leaning women and encouraged them to run for office or get involved in politics. ⁴⁴

In 2021, Richards stepped down as executive director of Supermajority and handed the leadership of the group over to Amanda Brown Lierman, who formerly worked for the Democratic National Committee and worked as the political director for Rock the Vote. Richards stayed on the group’s board and urged white women to “make space, to move aside, to pay it forward” for racial minorities. ⁴⁵

Women’s March

In October 2021, Cecile Richards spoke at the first Women’s March after the COVID-19 pandemic. She focused on Texas’s pro-life laws and called for the defeat of Texas politicians who supported them. ⁴⁶

Dobbs Decision and Aftermath

In December 2021, Cecile Richards claimed she was shocked that the U.S. Supreme Court would even take up a case that could allow states to regulate abortion. She claimed that regulating abortion would especially harm women of color and low-income women. ⁴⁷

In June 2022, Richards urged women in Hollywood to speak out against the Dobbs decision. She called the decision “a national health crisis” and urged Hollywood to come together like they do for a disaster to fight for abortion. ⁴⁸

In October 2022, Richards claimed that voters would support abortion at the ballot box because they believed the government should not make those kinds of decisions. ⁴⁹

Abortion in America

Cecile Richards created a series of short videos for a project called Abortion in America, which sought to urge people to support the abortion access. The plan was to capture the stories of people who Richards claimed pro-life laws harmed and how pro-abortion laws and policy can help people. The videos were a minute or so long and posted on short video platforms like TikTok. Richards launched the project after the passage of pro-life legislation in Texas in 2021, but Richards put it on hold after her cancer diagnosis. ⁷

Richards co-founded the project with Lauren Peterson and Kaitlyn Joshua because they believed that abortion related stories written by journalists did not resonate with readers and did not stay in the public eye except for a short amount of time. Abortion in America is a project of the Arabella Advisors-managed Hopewell Fund and raised over $1 million from half a dozen donors, including Phoebe Gates, the daughter of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. On Abortion in America’s website, the videos appeared next to articles written by news outlets in a format the New York Times said “blurr[ed] the lines between their advocacy work and traditional news media.” ⁵⁰

The project focused on women who lived in states which banned abortion. The women featured were forced to have abortions for medical reasons or had health complications due to miscarriages. In addition to producing short videos, the project hosted events where pro-abortion advocates spoke and shared their stories. Richards focused on Louisiana, a state where she returned to during the weekends after cancer treatment during the week in New York City, because the state had among the nation’s strictest pro-life laws. ⁵¹

2024 Election Cycle

In August 2024, Cecile Richards spoke at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) and ceremonially cast Texas’s votes for then-Vice President Kamala Harris to be the Democratic presidential candidate alongside Kate Cox, a woman who sued the state of Texas to have an abortion. ⁴²

In November 2024, Richards wrote an “open letter to women” in Rolling Stone magazine in support of Harris’s candidacy. Richards complained about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to allow states to regulate abortion in 2022 and said that women were giving their daughters fewer rights than they themselves had. She bragged about pro-abortion activists informing women about Plan C, a group which provides abortion pills for women in all 50 states.  She also celebrated pro-abortion activists donating to abortion funds and organizing to put pro-abortion ballot initiatives on the ballot on the state level. She attacked Donald Trump for nominating justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who decided to return abortion regulation to the states and claimed he would support an abortion ban because Project 2025 allegedly called for one. ⁵²

In November 2024, Cecile Richards voted for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Richards believed that even if American voters elected Harris president that it would be a very long time before abortion would be made legal nationally. In an interview, she praised abortion providers for publicly coming forward and proclaiming that they perform abortions and defending the practice. Richards also claimed that pro-abortion advocates should have been tougher to prevent the U.S. Supreme Court from returning abortion to the states. Richards also claimed that women were dying due to abortion restrictions but that it would take time for those stories to be researched and made public. ⁴²

Reaction To Donald Trump’s Second Election

Cecile Richards reacted to the second election of Donald Trump in 2024 by urging people to stock up on abortion pills in fear of a federal ban on them. Richards also expressed her belief that Republicans may act to pass a federal abortion ban. She also said that Democrats and the left should respond and acknowledge those voters who voted for Trump out of fear of the future. ⁷

Presidential Medal of Freedom and Death

Two months to the day before her death, then-President Joe Biden awarded Richards the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor. ⁸

Cecile Richards died on January 20, 2025, after an extended battle with cancer at the age of 67. ⁸

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23. Accessed April 10, 2018. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/01/26/580733009/after-years-in-the-trenches-planned-parenthoods-cecile-richards-will-step-down
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31. Richards, Cecile. “Cecile Richards: Tim Kaine Is An Incredible Ally for All Women.” Time. July 26, 2016. Accessed April 10, 2018. http://time.com/4423858/cecile-richards-tim-kaine-hillary-clinton/
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41. Kinnard, Meg. “Cecile Richards: Court’s Texas Move Could Mean End of Roe.” AP News, September 18, 2021. https://apnews.com/article/health-texas-ruth-bader-ginsburg-us-supreme-court-planned-parenthood-68af51484ec621229f4785e4f5e85209.
42. Panetta, Grace. “Cecile Richards on Voting for Kamala Harris: ‘I Had Been Waiting for This Chance All My Life.’” The 19th, November 1, 2024. https://19thnews.org/2024/11/cecile-richards-voting-harris-abortion/.
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45.  Haines, Errin. “Cecile Richards Turns Supermajority over to New Leadership.” The 19th, December 1, 2020. https://19thnews.org/2020/12/cecile-richards-supermajority-amanda-brown-lierman/.
46. Gerson, Jennifer. “‘I Need to Be with Other Folks as Outraged and Motivated as I Am’: Cecile Richards on Why This Year’s Women’s March Matters.” The 19th, October 1, 2021. https://19thnews.org/2021/10/i-need-to-be-with-other-folks-as-outraged-and-motivated-as-i-am-cecile-richards-on-why-this-years-womens-march-matters/.
47. “Katie Speaks to Former Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards about the Future of Abortion Rights.” Katie Couric Media, December 3, 2021. https://katiecouric.com/news/cecile-richards-abortion-law-mississippi-supreme-court-case/.
48. Littleton, Cynthia. “Cecile Richards on How Hollywood Can Fight for Reproductive Rights: ‘This Is a National Health Crisis.’” Variety, June 24, 2022. https://variety.com/2022/politics/news/cecile-richards-roe-v-wade-abortion-supreme-court-1235303067/.
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50. Testa, Jessica. “Can Stories about Abortion Break through the Noise?” The New York Times, October 31, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/31/business/media/cecile-richards-abortion-social-media.html.
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