Last week, Cecile Richards finally went public with plans to resign as president of Planned Parenthood. Richards led the nation’s largest abortion business for twelve years. In the video below, Richards announced she will be stepping down from Planned Parenthood sometime in 2018. The announcement came with little explanation of Richards’s departure or the abortion chain’s plans for her replacement.
Richards expressed gratitude for the more than a decade of leading the scandal-ridden organization. She states in the video that being president of Planned Parenthood “has been the greatest honor of my life.” Richards also praised “the life-changing and life-saving work of Planned Parenthood,” ironic for an organization that takes the lives of more than 320,000 preborn babies in abortions each year.
Over the course of Richards’s tenure, the number of abortions committed at Planned Parenthood remained steady or rose while non-abortion services plummeted. The legitimate health care services, such as pap smears and STI testing, which Planned Parenthood supporters continually tout as reason for taxpayer funding, continued to decline, as noted in the latest annual report, and the overall number of patients who accessed health care services at Planned Parenthood is significantly lower than in 2006 when Richards took over the position.
Meanwhile, over the course of the same years that abortion business grew, Richards’s salary skyrocketed to nearly $1 million. Given the hefty compensation and perks of running one of the largest anti-Life organizations in the country, Richards’s departure came as a surprise to some. Speculation is rampant that she will use her anti-Life clout to shift into a political career.
Such a move would make sense for Richards who already wields considerable political power through Planned Parenthood Political Action Committee, which lavished more than $30 million on failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Richards is the daughter of former Texas governor, the late Ann Richards, and worked for anti-Life House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California). Prominent anti-Life politicians were gushing with praise for Richards after news of her resignation became public. If Richards does pursue elected office, Texas would almost certainly be in her crosshairs. Richards has made no secret of her vehement opposition to the strong, life-saving Pro-Life laws passed in Texas in recent years, such as blocking funding to abortion providers and protecting innocent preborn babies from the violence of abortion. Any national political office would be a vehicle for Richards to attempt to undermine the Culture of Life taking root in Texas and other states following Texas’s lead.
The resignation of Cecile Richards also may indicate a troubled future for Planned Parenthood. The organization remains under investigation for the trafficking of baby parts harvested in abortions, and Pro-Life politicians are finally gaining traction in the effort to end taxpayer funding of the abortion giant. As David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress told LifeSiteNews, “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.” Planned Parenthood’s hundred year legacy of abortion and discrimination continued under the leadership of Richards, and we can only hope that her departure signals the impending demise of our nation’s largest abortion business.