Former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards recently penned an op-ed for The New York Times in which she called on Vice President Kamala Harris to be even more vocal in her support for unfettered abortion.
Richards made it clear that Harris and her running mate Gov. Tim Walz must ‘turn the volume up to 11’ on their abortion campaign strategy. She wrote [emphasis added]:
Ms. Harris’s answers on abortion [during the debate] emerged as her strongest moments onstage in a strong night for her overall — and provided a glimpse of a winning strategy for this election.
That involves the Harris-Walz ticket turning the volume up to 11 on abortion.
Richards isn’t wrong. In November 2023, The Atlantic even acknowledged that VP Harris has been viewed unfavorably by Americans on virtually everything except abortion. “Harris’s engagement with abortion rights has broken through to voters more than anything else in her vice presidency, according to the Democratic pollster Celinda Lake,” noted the author.
Richards wrote that Harris “understands that our country will never reach its full potential as long as half of its citizens are denied the most basic right to make their own decisions about their lives and futures. Simply put: She gets it.”
The argument that America can’t reach its “full potential” without a woman’s legalized ability to kill her preborn children is horrifically insulting to women. Who do men have to harm for the country to reach its “full potential”?
“When liberation costs innocent lives,” as the pro-life organization New Wave Feminists argues, “it’s merely oppression redistributed.” Richards is promoting the oppression of preborn children at the hands of their mothers for the supposed good of the nation and so that women can reach other goals that society deems more important than children. While it isn’t inherently wrong for a woman to want to succeed in goals that do not involve motherhood, it is inherently wrong to kill in order to make that happen.
Richards, a mother herself who claimed 10 years ago that her children’s lives didn’t begin until she gave birth to them, paints motherhood as a stumbling block to a woman’s false primary goal of helping the nation succeed — and insinuates that motherhood keeps women from finding any other success. It’s demeaning and it’s backwards. As St. Pope John Paul II famously said, “A Nation that kills its own children has no future.”
Richards also claims that abortion is a “basic right.” But no one has the right to kill an innocent human being who exists through no fault or effort of his own, inside his mother’s womb.
But Richards has a plan to help the Harris campaign promote these false ideas.
Write a speech devoted to abortion
Richards suggested that “Harris would do well, even, to devote an entire speech to the issue, laying out her plan to take action in support of abortion rights, with or without Congress.”
How could she do it “without Congress”? Well, Harris would have the power as president to issue an Executive Order, perhaps an expansion of Biden’s 2022 Executive Order on abortion, that would further expand abortion access.
Richards encouraged Harris to speak, not just to pro-abortion California and New York, but to pro-life states in the South and Midwest to urge those pro-lifers to turn their backs on preborn children.
Richards claimed that “the overwhelming majority of Americans … want to see abortion rights restored.” But most Americans want far more restrictions on abortion than were in place under Roe v. Wade. And most Americans likely don’t realize what voting for pro-abortion ballot amendments could allow in their states — abortion even in the third trimester, potentially up to birth, well beyond what most claim to support.
Polls continuously reveal that Americans do not support abortion throughout pregnancy, which Roe and Doe collectively permitted through broad language that created legal loopholes. A 2024 poll conducted by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion at Marist College found that 66% of respondents believe that “limits should be placed on when abortion is allowed.”
Sell abortion to America using emotional stories
Richards wants Harris to sell abortion to pro-lifers by using emotional stories to garner the sympathy of Americans. But in order to do that, the stories have to be spun to make it appear as though abortion was the answer to avoiding the suffering women faced.
None of the stories Richards mentioned required induced abortion — the direct and intentional killing of preborn children.
She referred to three high profile stories:
- Kaitlyn Joshua, who claimed she was denied miscarriage care. What her story shows is that pro-abortion doctors are willing to deny women the care they need rather than gain understanding of their state’s laws and create policy in line with them. She alleged that her doctor refused to see her until she was 12 weeks gestation just in case she miscarried — denying her basic medical care that could have saved her baby once she did miscarry. Once Joshua began experiencing miscarriage symptoms, it appeared she was not given the opportunity to attempt to stop the miscarriage. If a woman is experiencing a “threatened miscarriage” in which the child is still alive, as Joshua’s was, there are treatments available to try to stop the miscarriage. Joshua was denied that care at the expense of the pro-abortion narrative. If the miscarriage could not have been stopped, that wouldn’t have meant that Joshua needed an abortion or had an abortion. Treatment for a miscarriage is not the same as an induced abortion, in which a preborn child is intentionally targeted for death, even though the drugs used are often the same.
- A 12-year-old girl in Mississippi, who had become pregnant after being raped in her yard by a stranger. “Because of her state’s abortion ban,” said Richards, “The girl started seventh grade as the parent of a newborn.” But that’s a misrepresentation of the facts. The girl started seventh grade as a mother because she was raped. Her rapist deserved to pay for his crime, not the baby. Killing a baby because that baby was conceived in rape is discriminatory and makes the rape survivor the perpetrator of a deadly act. Richards fails to mention whether the rapist was caught and punished, instead focusing on her disappointment that an innocent baby is alive and worthy of love.
- Tiffany Campbell, who was pregnant with twins in 2006 — 16 years before Roe was overturned. She had learned her twins had Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome (TTTS), and instead of undergoing the standard procedure that could save them both (laser fetoscopy), she opted to use a radio frequency abortion to kill one of the babies at a hospital in Cincinnati. According to Cincinnati Children’s, even babies who “are more severely affected” by TTTS don’t have to be aborted.
“According to PerryUndem, a research and polling firm, exposure to these stories is helping to shift public opinion in support of reproductive rights — an imperative in this election and beyond,” said Richards.
While these stories are tragic, induced abortion to intentionally kill a preborn child was not necessary, and these stories and the people involved do not deserve to be exploited so that Richards and other abortion advocates can push for abortion on demand.
Richards’ op-ed proves that abortion advocates will stop at nothing to ensure abortion is available at any point in pregnancy for any reason, and that the expectations they hold for abortion-friendly politicians have no limit.
