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Cecile Richards, former president of Planned ParenthoodClaire Chretien / LifeSiteNews

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 21, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The former leader of America’s largest abortion business has just been honored with an award claiming to recognize her contribution to “civil and human rights” via her work.

On Wednesday night, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights gave Cecile Richards its Hubert H. Humphrey Civil and Human Rights Award at a dinner in Washington, D.C.

Calling Richards a “nationally respected leader in women’s health and reproductive rights,” the Conference hailed Planned Parenthood as a force for building a “healthier and safer world for women, men, and young people.” It credited Richards with “fight[ing] for expanded access to health care” and “innumerable nationwide campaigns to preserve patients’ access to preventive health care at Planned Parenthood health centers through federal programs.”

Richards announced rather abruptly in January she would be resigning after twelve years as the abortion giant’s president and CEO, and stepped down at the end of April. She ended her run with an annual salary of almost $1 million. The organization has not hired a replacement for Richards yet. Just last week, it was hit with the news that the Trump administration is banning facilities that commit or refer for abortions from receiving Title X money, which is a major revenue stream for Planned Parenthood.

In response to last week's human rights award, Dave Andrusko of National Right to Life News observed two particular ironies of the story. First is that the award’s namesake, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, once declared that the “moral test of a government is how it treats those who are at the dawn of life, the children,” as well as its treatment of the elderly, the sick, the impoverished, and the handicapped.

Second, Richards quoted voting rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer’s declaration that “nobody’s free until everybody’s free” in her acceptance speech. However, Harmer also “spoke out strongly against abortion as a means of genocide of blacks.”

Despite her latest branding as a “human rights” champion, Richards presided over the abortions of an estimated 3.5 million preborn babies, and has consistently rejected any acknowledgement of their humanity. In 2014 she claimed the question of when life begins was not “really relevant” to discussing abortion, and last month she told Playboy there was “no specific moment when life begins.”

The truth is that long-settled biological criteria, which is accepted in mainstream science and medical textbooks, establishes that a whole, distinct, and living human being exists once fertilization has occurred. The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution declares that the right to life cannot be deprived without due process of law, and legal history shows that it was intended and understood to include preborn life under its protection.

Further challenging the Conference’s depiction of Richards as a health champion, the pro-life Radiance Foundation reports that according to Planned Parenthood’s latest annual report, the organization increased the abortions it performed under her leadership almost eleven percent, while actual medical services for women sharply declined. Breast cancer screenings dropped 62 percent, pap tests 72 percent, and prenatal care 30 percent.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is a coalition of more than 200 left-wing groups, including the ACLU, Amnesty International, the Center for Reproductive Rights, GLSEN, Human Rights Campaign, the NAACP, George Soros’ Open Society Policy Center, and Planned Parenthood itself.