Earlier this year, Cecile Richards announced that, after 12 years and over 3.5 million abortions, she is finally stepping down as president and CEO of Planned Parenthood. She’s giving up her nearly $1 million salary, for a future that is not yet known. What is clear is that Richards is a political activist and organizer, and many believe she will return to politics again.
While Richards’ next steps are a mystery, her legacy is not. She has repeatedly claimed to advocate for women, but what she has done at Planned Parenthood shows just how much harm she has done to women.
Abortion
The first, and most obvious, is abortion itself. Planned Parenthood has not only stolen the lives of millions of preborn baby girls — it has specifically targeted them for death. The organization is a willing participant in gendercide, in which preborn baby girls are killed through abortion, solely because of their gender.
And as if it wasn’t bad enough to take the lives of these preborn babies, Planned Parenthood has also admitted on undercover recordings to having sold their body parts, sometimes without getting consent from their mothers first. This breaks multiple laws, and while Planned Parenthood and its allies claim the undercover videos exposing this grisly business were were fraudulent, that claim has been thoroughly debunked. The videos even revealed that Planned Parenthood kills babies born alive after abortion.
Planned Parenthood makes huge profits from selling the body parts of these babies… and by extension, the pain, vulnerability, and desperation of their mothers.
Preying on vulnerable women
Women who are struggling with unplanned pregnancies often go to Planned Parenthood for help. But instead of being given real aid in their time of need, they are manipulated, lied to, and pressured into abortion. Planned Parenthood is so invested in abortion that it will routinely cover up child rape and sex trafficking. In both undercover investigations and real-world examples, Planned Parenthood facilities across the country have been caught doing absolutely nothing after learning that a child was being sexually abused or trafficked. They didn’t alert authorities. They didn’t try to help these children. Instead, they committed the abortions, pocketed the money, and handed the young girls right back to their abusers or traffickers, no questions asked.
Planned Parenthood not only does not care about women and young girls, but thinks it is above the law.
Cecile Richards also likes to tout her role as the head of the nation’s premier health care organization for women. And at one time, this was at least somewhat true. Planned Parenthood used to offer more health care services for women, and even saw prenatal services as being its future. But under Richards’ leadership, that all changed — despite the organization’s reliance on spreading the myth that abortion is only 3% of what it does, a claim that was debunked by the Washington Post and by Live Action, in the video below:
Massive decrease in actual healthcare for women
Thanks to Richards, Planned Parenthood only serves a small percentage of women, performing less than 2 percent of all cancer screenings, less than 1 percent of all pap exams, and less than 2 percent of all breast exams in the nation. But meanwhile, it is the nation’s largest abortion provider. 94% of its pregnancy-related services is abortion. And legitimate health care has massively decreased. What has increased? Abortion. So Planned Parenthood simply lies about the services it dies — or doesn’t — provide, like mammograms.
It’s clear that Planned Parenthood’s sole priority for “serving” women is abortion. But abortion harms women, something Planned Parenthood doesn’t tend to reveal. Women who have had abortions are at increased risk of multiple cancers, including breast, ovarian, liver, and cervical cancers. Abortion is also known to increase the risk of premature birth, endometriosis, Pelvic Inflammatory Disease, and other physical complications. And then there are the psychological consequences — women who have had abortions are at risk for mental health disorders like depression and anxiety, drug and alcohol abuse, and suicidal and self-harming behaviors. But none of this matters to the organization that bills itself as being pro-woman.
And all of this is probably why Planned Parenthood is less popular than ever. This is the anti-woman legacy Cecile Richards will leave behind as she leaves Planned Parenthood.
