Updated at 3:09 p.m. EST.
January 24, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The President of America's largest abortion chain Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, plans to resign next week, according to a Buzzfeed report that cited “two sources familiar with the matter.”
A Planned Parenthood representative told Buzzfeed, “Cecile plans to discuss 2018 and the next steps for Planned Parenthood’s future at the upcoming board meeting.”
“The Planned Parenthood official did not comment on Richards’ future,” Buzzfeed reported, even though “Richards, 60, has informed at least some members of the organization’s board of directors [that she is leaving], one of the sources confirmed.”
Richards has overseen America’s largest abortion vendor since 2006. Her salary continually increased as did her tenure. She currently rakes in nearly a million dollars a year overseeing the organization that commits over 300,000 abortions annually.
During the Obama era, the abortion business had an ally in the White House. However, Richards still had to contend with investigations from Live Action and the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) that revealed Planned Parenthood’s willingness to cover up child sex abuse, aid-and-abet sex traffickers, and profit from selling body parts of aborted babies.
Since President Trump took office, Planned Parenthood has increasingly sounded the alarm about the threat he and other pro-life Republicans pose to abortion-on-demand.
“Cecile Richards was the most devoted practitioner of Planned Parenthood’s ‘out of sight, out of mind’ mantra to cover up their barbaric abortion business from the public,” David Daleiden of CMP told LifeSiteNews. “As Planned Parenthood faces federal criminal investigation from the FBI and DOJ for selling aborted baby hearts, lungs, livers, and brains, Richards’ departure shows that the old strategy is no longer working – the secret is out that Planned Parenthood is a taxpayer-sponsored crime syndicate of industrial-scale child killing, and even Cecile Richards can no longer put a friendly spin on it.”
“Cecile Richards may be stepping down because Planned Parenthood is under investigation for illegally trafficking in aborted baby body parts and other crimes,” Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue, told LifeSiteNews. “She may be trying to get out before indictments drop. She is also tainted with other scandals by her close affiliation with Hillary Clinton and Fusion GPS, which are also being investigated. Planned Parenthood may now view her as a liability.”
“In any case, this news indicates a destabilized Planned Parenthood organization, and as long as they are in disarray, they can't expand their abortion enterprise, and that is good news,” said Newman.
Under Richards’ leadership, Planned Parenthood pushed the myth that the 300,000+ abortions her company commits every year are only three percent of its services. The Live Action video below debunks that statistic, which is often used to justify giving the abortion vendor tax dollars.
According to its own annual report, during the 2016-2017 fiscal year, Planned Parenthood aborted 321,384 babies and received $543.7 million from the government. That $543.7 million from taxpayers is 37 percent of its $1.46 billion budget.
The Buzzfeed report caused Twitter to erupt with speculations about the reason for Richards’ rumored departure. She is releasing a book in April 2018, Make Trouble. Richards is the daughter of the late Ann Richards, the Democratic governor of Texas during the early 1990s. One pro-LGBT activist on Twitter floated the idea that Richards may be considering following in her mother’s footsteps.
Father Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, told LifeSiteNews he hopes Richards has a change of heart and becomes pro-life, like other abortion industry leaders have.
“As someone who works extensively with people who once worked in the abortion industry, and who accompanied both Bernard Nathanson and Norma McCorvey on their journeys of conversion, I always say a prayer when someone like Cecile Richards has a change in her job, because it can be an opportunity for her to evaluate more clearly what she has been doing and why,” said Pavone. He noted Richards hasn't indicated “any sign here of conversion,” but that this is a “heightened opportunity for grace.”
“Of course, the larger problem is not the personnel who lead Planned Parenthood, but the corrupt and criminal enterprise that the organization itself is,” said Pavone. “Whoever serves it, in any capacity, is wounded and distorted in conscience. The whole enterprise needs to be closed.”
Planned Parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger, a racist and eugenics supporter who once spoke to a Ku Klux Klan meeting. She called some people “human weeds” and wrote, “We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”
One Live Action sting revealed the abortion company’s willingness to accept racist donations.