Cecile Richards, former president of Planned Parenthood and a staunch advocate for reproductive rights, died on Monday, according to a statement from her family. Since 2023, she battled glioblastoma, a form of terminal brain cancer. She was 67 years old.
“This morning our beloved Cecile passed away at home, surrounded by her family and her ever-loyal dog, Ollie,” her family—her husband, Kirk, and her kids Lily, Hannah, and Daniel—wrote. “Our hearts are broken today but no words can do justice to the joy she brought to our lives.”
Richards led Planned Parenthood for a dozen turbulent years during which access to reproductive health care was being increasingly undermined and her organization, the largest provider of such care in the country, was targeted. After stepping down in 2018, she continued advocating for abortion access—most recently, by launching a new initiative, an abortion storytelling platform called Abortion in America, meant to highlight stories about the fallout of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.
In a 2018 interview with Mother Jones, upon the publication of her memoir Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead, Richards said:
I think one of the myths in the world is that somehow being an activist or a troublemaker is burdensome, or you’re always depressed. People would also walk up to me and say, “How are you doing?” Actually, I feel like being an organizer and an activist gives you such a chance to make a difference in the world. It’s really an incredible life, and so I hope that what this book also gives people is a sense of the joy that you can get from making a little bit of difference in the world and the amazing people you meet along the way.
“If you’d like to celebrate Cecile today,” her family said in the statement, “we invite you to put on some New Orleans jazz, gather with friends and family over a good meal, and remember something she said a lot over the last year: ‘It’s not hard to imagine future generations one day asking: ‘When there was so much at stake for our country, what did you do?’ The only acceptable answer is: ‘Everything we could.’”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
