News

Wednesday February 3, 2010


Planned Parenthood President Lands Spot on Ford Foundation Board

PRI President: appointment exposes “anti-natal alliance”

By Peter J. Smith

NEW YORK, February 3, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Ford Foundation has announced that Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, will join its board of trustees when they reconvene in May.

Richards, who has led PPFA since 2006, will have the capacity as a member of the foundation’s 15-member board to influence broad policy decisions related to the Ford Foundation’s issue areas, geographic focus, budget, investments, and professional standards.

A press release from the Ford Foundation announced that the trustees had voted to include Richards into their membership at a meeting last week. The PPFA president will serve a six-year term, and can be nominated again to serve a second term.

The Ford Foundation was established in 1936 by motor giant Henry Ford as a philanthropic institution serving “the public welfare” – yet its goals and the goals of Planned Parenthood have never been far apart.

From the beginning, the Ford Foundation has promoted population control internationally among its charitable goals, and every year contributes tens of millions of dollars to the International Planned Parenthood Federation. Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was a well-known promoter of birth control as a means of reducing unwanted populations.

“Cecile has a rich understanding of the social justice mission that guides our grant making, and I am very proud to welcome her to our board,” said Luis Ubiñas, president of the Ford Foundation.

“Her grasp of the complexities of social change, her achievements in building grassroots movements, and her commitment to working for the marginalized reflect the best traditions of the foundation’s leadership.”

The Ford Foundation has also funded groups such as Catholics for Choice, a pro-abortion organization promoting the notion that the Catholic Church’s teaching on sexuality and the sanctity of life are non-essential to the faith.

In 2006, the foundation funded a report submitted to the UN by non-governmental organizations advocating “the right to broader sexual freedom and a right to sexual expression and pleasure.” The report, entitled “Building the UN Human Rights Council and its Special Procedures: Notes for Sexual Rights and Reproductive Rights Advocates” commended the UN Human Rights Council in “calling for the decriminalization of abortion, thus setting the stage for arguments that a right to abortion exists in international law.”

Steven Mosher, President of Population Research Institute, told LifeSiteNews.com that the Ford Foundation and Cecile Richards “have long been ideological bedfellows.”

“The Ford Foundation has long been one of the chief funders of population control programs around the world. Cecile Richards, for her part, heads America’s largest abortion provider,” Mosher said in an e-mail.

“The appointment of Richards to the Ford Foundation board brings their secret, anti-natal alliance out into the open. It bodes ill for the world’s children and families.”

See related coverage by LifeSiteNews.com:

Controversial Sexual “Rights” Being Pushed at UN Human Rights Council

Ford Foundation Stops Funding Anti-Semitism; Continues To Fund Anti-Catholicism