A Political Expert Girds for Battle as Head of Planned Parenthood

When Cecile Richards took over as the new head of Planned Parenthood last month, she said she hoped the good tidings she was hearing from well-wishers would continue. “I’d like to see the honeymoon last a while,” she says.

But within a couple of weeks, it became clear that she would not have much time for settling in, as the Supreme Court announced it would soon hear a case on the constitutionality of banning one type of late-term abortion, then backed the rights of anti-abortion demonstrators who had been subject to an injunction against their presence at clinics. Meanwhile, South Dakota enacted the most far-reaching abortion ban in the country.

Ms. Richards, 48, replaced an interim leader, Karen Pearl, who was named after Gloria Feldt, who held the job for nearly a decade, resigned abruptly early last year. Ms. Richards will earn $340,000 per year to lead her staff of 200.

Her main job will be to lead efforts to uphold Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, and to advocate on behalf of the 121 independent Planned Parenthood chapters across the country, as well as the 850 clinics they manage.

She says she will try to broaden Planned Parenthood’s advocacy approach so that conservatives and others not typically allied with the group better understand the work of the largest reproductive-health organization in the United States.

But that might not be easy. Ms. Richards brings with her a storehouse of liberal bona fides — and, perhaps, baggage. She is the daughter of Ann Richards, the former governor of Texas whose political career ended when George W. Bush defeated her effort to get re-elected. Cecile Richards also worked to organize janitors into labor unions in Los Angeles in the 1980s and later started the Texas Freedom Network, in Austin, to monitor and expose the activities of groups on the religious right.

In the late 1990s, she became closely involved with the abortion-rights movement as a board member of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, in New York, and as the leader of an abortion-rights project supported by the Turner Foundation, in Atlanta.

Like her mother, Ms. Richards has been intensely involved in Democratic Party politics, serving as deputy chief of staff to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2002 and 2003. She then took over as president of America Votes, a coalition of liberal activist and labor groups that raised more than $350-million for Democratic Party political causes in 2004. Like that group’s major benefactor, the international financier and billionaire George Soros, Ms. Richards has become a lightning rod for conservatives.

“Cecile Richards’s whole career has been based around pro-abortion issues, which is troubling,” says Richard Poe, a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, a conservative think tank in Los Angeles. He adds that many on the right question the legality of America Votes.

“The organization she ran was nothing more than a way to circumvent the campaign-finance laws against groups that illegally coordinate with a political party,” he says. (Ms. Richards denies the charge.)

“There are a lot of questions about how much the rise in her career is due to talent and how much is due to nepotism,” says Mr. Poe.

Esperanza Garcia Walters, board chair of Planned Parenthood, says such charges are ill-founded.

“She may have learned some things from her mom, but our hiring of her has nothing to do with her name,” she says. “We hired her because she has a documented history of working on our issues, and because she has the ability to move comfortably through different groups of people — from janitors in Los Angeles to politicians in Washington. She understands the lives of the people we serve, and that’s paramount.”

Besides battling courts and federal and state governments over abortion laws, Ms. Richards plans to solidify the organization’s finances and its place in the center of the reproductive debate.

“The board has made it clear to me that we have to look forward 10 years to our 100th anniversary,” she says. “We want our list of accomplishments to grow substantially before then.”

In an interview with The Chronicle, Ms. Richards discussed her new position.

Were you hired to sharpen Planned Parenthood’s abortion-rights message?

Well, maybe. Planned Parenthood is uniquely situated on the front lines of this debate. Given the Bush administration’s reformation of the Supreme Court, we think that the issues that we deal with will likely be decided by the states, so we’ll have to put more of our energies there to safeguard these services. That doesn’t mean we won’t challenge the Supreme Court when we need to, but working at the state level is a natural place for us to be. We have a national image and mandate, but what makes us different is that we have a presence in all 50 states.

What would you do if Roe v. Wade were overturned?

My focus will be making sure Roe is not overturned. For over 30 years legal abortion access has been a constitutionally protected right, one Americans have come to take for granted.

Will you attempt to work more to reach politicians who haven’t been receptive to Planned Parenthood in the past?

Planned Parenthood always has and always will work with any and all elected officials who are willing to work with us. The issues we work on are not partisan issues, but they have been cast that way.

Some of our strongest allies were Republicans, such as George H.W. Bush, and we need to get back to that. What we do is so widely supported, not only because of our brand name, but also our place in the community as a family-planning agency, that it is just unassailable.

So there are all kinds of opportunities to work with people on both sides of the aisle. I come to this organization with complete enthusiasm and willingness to work with anyone.

Several anti-abortion groups say your appointment shows Planned Parenthood has become an activist group, and has ceased to be a health-care organization. Is there any truth in this?

I’ve spent my entire life working on behalf of low-wage men and women to get health-care services and improve their lot in general. I see that as the mission of Planned Parenthood as well.

We’re in the business of providing services to millions of people — five million each year — who need them. That’s why I’m in this job. We will take the political action we need to ensure that we can give the services we need to provide. That’s why I was brought in. I’m a consensus builder.

Has Planned Parenthood become synonymous with abortion it performs 200,000 of them per year and not its other health-care services?

We have a tremendous opportunity to educate the public about the wide array of services that we provide. More than 90 percent of the services we give are not abortion-related. Half of the folks who access our services are able to avoid an unplanned pregnancy through access to birth-control services at clinics. We estimate that more than 600,000 unwanted pregnancies were prevented through our clinics. We’ll focus more on selling that to the American people.

What are the major changes facing reproductive-rights groups now?

What’s changing for us is medical technology. The advent of emergency contraception is an enormous development. Looking forward the next 10 years, we’ll be using new strategies by offering online services that will be on the cutting edge of medical technology for our clients.

The organization’s fund raising has gone from $60-million in 2001 to $76-million in 2002 to $55-million in 2003. What will you do to shore up donations?

I’ll spend a great amount of time on fund raising. I have good relationships in the foundation community, which have always been big supporters of Planned Parenthood.

I’ll also step up work with large donors. There is an enormous amount of untapped resources out there, such as young women with means who know Planned Parenthood and may have been served by us in the past.

We’re increasingly raising money online. Actually, our fund raising is in very good shape right now. We had a very good December, which is great considering all the natural disasters that happened in 2005.

In some states, abortion services are hard to come by, especially as the number of Planned Parenthood affiliates drops. How do you plan to help people whose options have narrowed?

In some areas, there has been some merging of affiliates for business reasons. We have continued to serve five million people a year for several years, and that has remained constant. But we are a group that looks to grow.

There’s absolutely no question that our opponents want to create a gauntlet for women who want to access services — not just abortion, but family-planning services as well.

In the last 10 years, Planned Parenthood has developed their public-advocacy arm in a really strong way.

When we conduct polls, we find that people overwhelmingly want planning services available in their communities. We have to make sure that the people we’re electing realize that. A strong majority support women’s access to reproductive services.

Do you think you’ll ever follow in your mother’s footsteps and run for public office?

I don’t, but it’s sweet of you to ask. I think anybody who works in nonprofits or in providing direct services has to figure out where they can make the most meaningful contribution. This is the place for me.