This article was updated to include comment from Citizens for a Pro-Life America director Dr. Monica Miller.
(LifeSiteNews) — A former president of the major abortion chain Planned Parenthood revealed in an interview this weekend that she has been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Pro-life advocates have responded by calling for prayers for her conversion.
Cecile Richards, 66, headed Planned Parenthood from 2006 to 2018 and has remained active in pro-abortion activism, assisting in the creation of a chatbot to help women access abortion and co-founding a women’s political action group, The Huffington Post reported. She is the daughter of Texas’ last Democratic governor, Ann Richards, who passed away of esophageal cancer in 2006.
“For 12 years, Richards has been a strong leader in a tragically wrong direction,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America president Marjorie Dannenfelser said in 2018 in response to news that Richards was stepping down from her role.
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In an interview with The Cut on Sunday, the former Planned Parenthood chief said she has been receiving treatment for an incurable glioblastoma for the past six months. People diagnosed with the highly aggressive cancer have a survival length between just 12 and 18 months, and adults with the cancer have a survival rate of just 17 percent two years after diagnosis.
The Huffington Post reported that Richards’ “motor skills, speech and ability to write” have been impacted by the cancer, but that doctors have expressed optimism due to her continued physical strength. The Glioblastoma Research Organization has stated that “[m]any new research techniques are in development, some of which have proved successful in changing data on glioblastoma treatment outcomes.”
“The last six months have been wild – but thanks to incredible health care providers and the support of family and friends, I’m doing really well,” Richards wrote in an X post Sunday.
“I’ve felt lucky all my life, and I feel lucky now: to be here, doing this work, alongside all of you,” she said.
News of Richards’ diagnosis has sparked sympathy and well-wishes from prominent supporters of her work in the pro-abortion space, including Vice President Kamala Harris, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and former U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Meanwhile, pro-life advocates have urged prayers for the conversion of Richards, who oversaw millions of abortions during her tenure with the abortion giant.
READ: Did Jesus give St. Faustina the Divine Mercy Chaplet as a prayer against abortion?
“Despite the grave evil that Cecile Richards has perpetrated against millions of children, we must nevertheless pray for her conversion as she is dying,” LifeSiteNews president John-Henry Westen said. “Jesus has paid for all our sins, even the most heinous, so let’s turn to Him always.”
LifeSite co-founder and managing director Steve Jalsevac also called for prayers for Richards, emphasizing that Christians must not lose hope and ought to “never give up on anyone.”
“I would encourage prayers for Richards and that her current situation will help her to come to terms about the wrongness of her advocacy for baby-killing and experience repentance and conversion to God,” Jalsevac said. “We never give up on anyone and hope for them to turn to God as many of us did when we previously held wrong views and did wrong things because of ignorance of truth.”
“Cecile, your life has value, and I’m saddened to hear this,” Students for Life of America president Kristan Hawkins wrote on X. “I’ll be fasting for you today.”
Conservative Christian journalist Ben Zeisloft encouraged his followers to “[p]ray that Cecile Richards, who led Planned Parenthood for 12 years, would repent and turn to Jesus amid her brain cancer.”
Dr. Monica Miller, director of Citizens for a Pro-Life America, said in a Tuesday email to LifeSite that there’s “no way to soften” Richards’ legacy, and that Christians should earnestly pray for God’s mercy for her.
“Richards is facing the end of her own life. Many prayers must be said for her–to pray she will repent of her abortion advocacy and the killing of her own baby,” Miller said. She noted that Richards publicly admitted in 2015 to aborting her fourth child because she and her husband “decided that was as big as our family needed to be,” and that “[i]t wasn’t anything more dramatic than that.”
“To kill another human being and say ‘There’s no more to it than that’–is bone chilling,” Miller wrote. “Pray she will know the love of God and that the God of LIFE will be merciful to her.”
“With such repentance Richards can embrace in the next life the child, her child, whose life she denied in this life,” she said.