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On Monday, Cecile Richards, the longtime labor organizer, feminist activist, and author who helmed Planned Parenthood for over a decade, died at home at the age of 67 after being diagnosed with glioblastoma—a type of brain tumor—in 2023. “This morning our beloved Cecile passed away at home, surrounded by her family and her ever-loyal dog, Ollie. Our hearts are broken today but no words can do justice to the joy she brought to our lives,” Richards’s family said in a statement.
Richards was born in Waco, Texas, in 1957 to David and Ann Richards, the latter of whom served as the governor of Texas from 1991 to 1995. Richards followed in her mother’s political footsteps from an early age, becoming an honorary page to the 62nd Texas State Legislator at the age of 13 and helping her mother campaign on behalf of pro-choice candidates beginning in high school.
After graduating from Brown University in 1980, Richards went on to work as a labor organizer, as well as assisting with her mother’ gubernatorial campaign, serving as deputy chief of staff to Nancy Pelosi, and founding the Democratic voter-turnout-focused organization America Votes before becoming president of Planned Parenthood in 2006.
As the president of Planned Parenthood, Richards saw the reproductive health organization through several Republican presidential administrations, during which its work was frequently scapegoated by a growing right-wing, anti-choice political movement. Still, Richards was never dissuaded from fighting for abortion rights, writing in a 2022 New York Times op-ed, as the Supreme Court prepared to overturn Roe v. Wade: “The millions of Americans who are watching, horrified, as the Supreme Court prepares to roll back a right they have had for nearly half a century need to be just as dogged and determined. But it’s going to take unprecedented levels of political activism to fight back. If Republicans are going to push their extreme agenda, we must make sure they have to answer for it where it counts: at the ballot box.”
Richards stayed politically active even after her 2018 departure from Planned Parenthood, co-founding the political action group Supermajority with activists Alicia Garza and Ai-jen Poo and helping to cast Texas’s ceremonial votes at the 2024 Democratic National Convention to nominate former Vice President Kamala Harris. Richards also published her memoir, Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead, in 2018.
She is survived by her husband, labor organizer Kirk Adams, as well as the couple’s three adult children.
