April 24, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — The outgoing president of Planned Parenthood just declared that she considers Donald Trump’s presidency a bigger threat to abortion-on-demand than any of his predecessors.
“We are seeing this administration is the worst for women that I've seen in my lifetime,” Cecile Richards told CNN’s Van Jones during an interview televised Saturday, The Hill reported.
The comments came in the context of a discussion of the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump.
Jones asked Richards what she would tell the younger Trump “she should be doing that she's not doing right now in the White House.” The abortion giant CEO, who has announced she will resign later this year, answered that Ivanka could be pushing back against her father’s policies on “pretty much anything.”
“I feel like right now, she's the daughter of the president but putting that aside she is actually one of the highest-ranking women in the White House, and federal employees,” Richards said. “My understanding is that her portfolio is 'women.’”
“There are a number of places I feel she could be making an impact,” she continued, “but we are seeing this administration is the worst for women that I've seen in my lifetime.”
Richards’ comments serve as the latest reminder of how dramatically Trump has subverted expectations on both sides of America’s political divide.
Many pro-life leaders and commentators vehemently opposed his candidacy, citing his “very pro-choice” past, including support for partial-birth abortion in 1999. Trump said he became pro-life in 2011, but distrust persisted throughout the 2016 presidential campaign.
After taking office, however, Trump established a thoroughly pro-life record. His actions include numerous pro-life judicial and administrative appointees, executive actions such as restoring the ban on overseas abortion funding and rolling back the Obamacare abortifacient coverage mandate, calling on Congress to defund Planned Parenthood and ban late-term abortions, opening an investigation into Planned Parenthood’s sale of organs from aborted babies, resisting efforts to facilitate abortions for illegal immigrant minors in U.S. custody, and supporting abstinence education at home and abroad.
Pro-life leaders such as Susan B. Anthony List’s Marjorie Dannenfelser and Concerned Women for America’s (CWA) Penny Nance have praised the Trump administration’s commitment to the pro-life cause as unprecedented, and the pro-life group Operation Rescue named Trump their 2017 “pro-life person of the year.”
This is not the first time that Richards has criticized Ivanka’s role in her father’s White House.
It was reported in the early months of Trump’s term that Richards agreed to a private meeting with Trump and husband Jared Kushner shortly after the inauguration. In her book released earlier this month, Richards claims that the two attempted to “bribe” Planned Parenthood to get out of the abortion business during the meeting.
“If Planned Parenthood wanted to keep our federal funding, we would have to stop providing abortions,” Richards claimed Kushner said. “He described his ideal outcome: a national headline reading ‘Planned Parenthood Discontinues Abortion Services.’”
“It was surreal, essentially being asked to barter away women’s rights for more money,” the abortion CEO continued.
In response to those comments, CWA’s Nance blasted Richards for “try[ing] to gin up drama surrounding that meeting to sell books.”
“Since she took the helm of Planned Parenthood in 2006, the number of patients the organization has seen has declined by 23 percent, but the number of abortions has increased,” Nance wrote. The “truth is they don’t really care about providing birth control or anything else other than abortion. That’s why when Ivanka Trump offered Cecile an increase in tax funding to provide real care for women, she turned them down flat.”