Planned Parenthood has made a lot of news over the past two years. There have been countless allegations of illegal activity among clinics. Doctors have been caught violating abortion laws left and right. The entire organization nearly lost all of their government funding. And, through it all, they have continued to rally a vocal minority to try and convince the country that abortions are mainstream.
All of this was under the close watch of Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood. She has officially stepped down from that post. In light of her leaving, we’re forced to look at her legacy and how she has impacted America. Spoiler warning: it isn’t good.
From Richards’ point of view, she was a wildly effective and influential leader of Planned Parenthood. She claims her activism expanded abortion access across the country, prioritized the abortion debate in national healthcare discussions and even prevented the downfall of Obamacare. She says it was the presence of pink hats that dictated the actions of Congress (rather than the lack of a super majority in the Senate), and that Republicans had no choice but to bow to the whims of the Planned Parenthood group.
She fully believes that it was her efforts that prevented Planned Parenthood from being fully defunded, and that she has secured the “reproductive rights” of women in America henceforth. It sounds a bit egotistical, but it’s actually delusional. Let’s compare Richards’ view of her legacy to that of her supporting Democrats.
Democrat Point of View
On the left, they saw Planned Parenthood gain funds and then shrivel under Richards. There is no doubt that donations and private funding are at an all-time high, and they grew fairly steadily since Richards took over in 2006. From that point of view, she was the golden goose.
On the other hand, she saw the effectiveness and overall impact of Planned Parenthood decline sharply. Even while funding rose, clinics closed steadily throughout her tenure, and patient flow regularly declined. In fact, she saw more than 100 clinics close overall, and she is leaving Planned Parenthood in its least effective state since Roe vs Wade. In total, Planned Parenthood has 25-percent fewer clinics and sees 25-percent fewer patients than it did when Richards took over.
From the Democrats’ point of view, this is a colossal failure, but it is forgivable. What isn’t forgivable is the shame she brought to Planned Parenthood and the left through scandal. How many hidden recordings now have shown that the organization regularly participates in the sale of human remains? How many times did clinics and doctors under Richards get caught violating the rules and breaking laws to make a quick buck?
Despite Cecile’s numerical failures, the prominence of scandal is probably the real reason she’s leaving the organization. The left just can’t afford to keep looking bad in everything they do. This is unlikely to change any of that, but it’s how they feel.
Raw Numbers
Still, the Democrats can’t look at anything without doing major mental gymnastics and spinning wild variations of the truth. So, let’s look at the pure numbers of Cecil’s reign over Planned Parenthood. In a 12-year tenure, her organization performed more than 3.8 million abortions. That accounts to almost 1,000 abortions a day and equates to one abortion every 97 seconds for the entire time she was president. That’s a bloody legacy, but it’s further tainted.
Of those 3.8 million abortions, 27.1 percent were performed on black women. That amounts to 1.03 million black abortions. That was enough for Planned Parenthood alone to reduce the black American population by 2.5 percent. (Total abortions push these numbers higher as Planned Parenthood only performs about one-third of all abortions in America.)
The total racial distribution of abortions shows that white Americans receive about 10-percent of all abortions. If you use the logic of Black Lives Matter, minorities are grossly overrepresented in these statistics, and it shows that Planned Parenthood significantly contributes to the perpetuation of minority representation in America.
Putting it Together
There are a lot of takes on Cecil Richards and her legacy, but there are a few inarguable facts. She clearly failed in virtually all of her goals. Planned Parenthood shrunk significantly under her watch. While it is still funded for now, the rampant scandals under her nose and obvious loss of support across America suggest that the organization’s days are numbered. The arguments for the necessity of Planned Parenthood shrink every year, and it’s only a matter of time before Congress can eliminate this stain on our country once and for all.
Worse than Richards’ failure as a leader is the blood of her legacy. She is directly responsible for millions of deaths. Her organization overtly followed the eugenic principles of Planned Parenthood’s founders, and it has disproportionately hurt minority groups across the country. Cecil ran the group that killed more black Americans in the past 12 years than all forms of illegal violence, drug use and war combined. And, this is true despite Planned Parenthood’s rapid decline over that period.
There’s not much we can say. Cecile Richards was an ineffective leader. Despite her failures, she still managed to extend the blight on our country that is Planned Parenthood. She has more blood on her hands than every American president combined. She has deliberately perpetrated eugenics in her clinics. She has marketed the desecrated remains of unborn infants, and she has flaunted all of it. We can only hope that her replacement is equally inept and helps hasten the evil that is Planned Parenthood to its final demise.
