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Planned Parent­hood's Cecile Richards shares her views on the state of women's health

 
Cecile Richards: “We are at a 30-year low for unintended pregnancy in America, and a 40-year low for teen pregnancy. How that has happened is getting better access to family planning, birth control and education for young people.” Watch an interview excerpt at tampabay.com/video.
Cecile Richards: “We are at a 30-year low for unintended pregnancy in America, and a 40-year low for teen pregnancy. How that has happened is getting better access to family planning, birth control and education for young people.” Watch an interview excerpt at tampabay.com/video.
Published March 7, 2016

Talk about a busy time for Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood and one of Hillary Clinton's most enthusiastic supporters.

Donald Trump's rivals are attacking him for praising some of Planned Parenthood's non-abortion services, legislators in Florida and across the country are looking at enacting more abortion restrictions, and the U.S. Supreme Court last week took up controversial restrictions on women's clinics in Texas.

I caught up with the 58-year-old daughter of late Texas Gov. Ann Richards while she made a brief stop at Clinton's newly opened Ybor City campaign office Thursday. Wearing a red suit with a gold Hillary lapel pin, Richards chatted with me about everything from tepid support for Clinton by young people to Trump's Planned Parenthood comments, and how best to reduce the number of abortions.

An edited transcript of our conversation:

Does it frustrate you, as someone whose mother broke her share of glass ceilings and with you so involved in women's health issues, that there's a generation of young women who apparently just don't think it's that big a deal to potentially have the first woman president?

In some ways it's great that there are young people who don't think it's a big deal anymore. … I do think that young people are going to play an outsized role in November. There is a generational shift, but I think back to my mom's race for governor and I see some of the issues that she dealt with and some of the treatment she got as a public figure, and I see what's happening with Hillary and some of it's very reminiscent of mom's race.

How so?

I just think there's such a double standard for women running for office, not only for president or for governor but for state representative or Congress. And yet I find that women that can make it through are so toughened up by that experience, and they really run because they want to get things done. I spend a lot of time with folks in the Senate, and there are now 20 women in the Senate. I would say they are the single most effective driving force in the Senate in actually achieving things, in being able to work across party lines.

Fifteen years ago Planned Parenthood wasn't nearly the bogeyman it is today with Republicans leaders, was it?

Even further back than 15 years ago, Planned Parenthood was started by Republicans all across the country. Some of our founding mothers and fathers were Republicans who believed what I think are traditional Republican Party values of small government, personal responsibility.

We still have Republican patients and board members and employees and supporters, and I think they are completely confused and dismayed at the tone of the Republican Party. I can't explain why the Republican leadership — you've got to distinguish between rank-and-file Republicans and the leadership — have I think gone off the rails. This Congress, not only did they vote to defund Planned Parenthood, they voted to end the National Family Planning Program that was originally signed into law by Richard Nixon. That's how extreme it's gotten, and I don't think the attacks on Planned Parenthood reflect where the Republican mainstream is.

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One of many extraordinary things we've seen in this presidential election is Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner, on national TV praising a good amount of what Planned Parenthood does. How do you react to that?

Planned Parenthood does an enormous amount of good, and I'm glad that he recognizes that. Of course, on the other hand, he's committed repeatedly to ending all access to Planned Parenthood to millions of folks who come to us for care. One in five women in America come to Planned Parenthood for health care, so it's fairly disingenuous to say, "You do great things, but by the way, we're not going to let anybody go to you for care." I saw an NBC poll the other day that showed 40 percent of his supporters are pro-choice, which does reflect that millions and millions of Republicans in this country do not support this very extreme desire to roll back the clock on women's rights in America.

When we see his tax returns, will we see that Donald Trump has donated to Planned Parenthood?

Not that I know of, but I don't know.

Does he worry you less than a Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz?

One thing that has been consistent in this primary is that every single candidate that has been in the lead — and that would include Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Donald Trump — has pledged to end access to Planned Parenthood. They don't support safe and legal abortion, and want to overturn the Affordable Care Act, which is how 55 million American women are getting access to no-cost contraceptives and preventive care in America, so I think there is really no difference. And this is a candidate that has been so dismissive of immigrants, of Muslims, of women, and these are our patients. We can't have a president who is so focused on dividing and I think demeaning important parts of our community.

Florida is now putting a 24-hour waiting period on abortions. I think a lot of people would hear that and think, "Well that's a monumental decision to make, why not have a 24-hour waiting period."

They're considering another bill, to require admitting privileges, and I think this is part of the strategy by folks who want to end access to safe and legal abortion. That's kind of where it begins, but what I've seen in my home state of Texas, hundreds of thousands of women have now lost access to a local health care provider. … Women are very thoughtful about their decisions about pregnancy. These are the most personal decisions women will ever make in their lifetime. You poll people all across the country and including the state of Florida and ask them who's in the best position to make a personal decision about a pregnancy — is it a woman or is it a politician? — and they overwhelmingly believe women should make these decisions without politicians interfering.

Florida has about 85,000 abortions annually. If Gov. Rick Scott or the Florida Legislature came to you and said, "Cecile, how do we cut that number dramatically?" What would you tell them?

We are at a 30-year low for unintended pregnancy in America, and a 40-year low for teen pregnancy. How that has happened is getting better access to family planning, birth control and education for young people. This is not rocket science. What we've seen in state after state is where women have access to any kind of birth control at no cost — so you take that out of the equation and can choose the birth control that's best for them — we've been able to reduce unintended pregnancy, teen pregnancy and the abortion rate. This is why I find it so incomprehensible the Republican leadership wants to end access to safe and legal abortion, but also end access to no-cost birth control. That is the single-best thing we could do as a country.

Why do you say Republican leaders want to end access to no-cost control?

This Congress has voted repeatedly to end the National Family Planning Program, which has helped millions of women get access to no-cost birth control. And one of the biggest battles we waged as Planned Parenthood with the Affordable Care act was to get birth control covered at no cost. It wasn't easy.

When we hear people talk about defunding Planned Parenthood, what would that actually mean, tangibly, to Americans?

We get reimbursed for health care that we provide. What the federal government reimburses us for are cancer screenings, well women visits, family planning services. … When they talk about defunding, really what it means is they're going to say to more than a million folks who come to us through those programs, "You cannot choose the provider of your choice. You can't go to your local Planned Parenthood even if that's where you have always gone for your doctor visits."

What you'll hear people say is that Congress doesn't have to fund Planned Parenthood, that there are plenty of organizations that provide good health care services but don't provide abortions.

You can look at the state of Texas, where that kind of was their idea but now 100,000 women lost access not only to birth control but to basic cancer screenings. … I go to state after state where there are not health care providers lining up to provide low-income women access to basic, preventive health care. And that's what we do. … For many women, we are their only doctor. That's their one doctor visit, and the good news is if a woman comes in for birth control, then you can make sure she gets her Pap smear. She may never have gone for a breast exam. When we do preventive care well in this country, it means not only getting family planning services to folks but doing early detection of cancer when it is the most treatable. I think everyone in America agrees with that.

Your mother lost re-election as Texas governor to George W. Bush. There's been this conventional wisdom that Jeb Bush was the "smart one" always expected to be president. Given your personal experiences, what's your perception of the Bush brothers?

I don't know that I'd want to compare them, but I do think that Jeb Bush was running for president in a year where the Republican Party is being dominated by the most extreme elements. I don't know Jeb Bush, but it looks to me like he never stood a chance. Look at the kinds of things Donald Trump is saying about people in America. … We're talking about a Republican Party that has gone so far away from any party that elected George Bush that I don't even think the comparison is fair.

Contact Adam C. Smith at asmith@tampabay.com. Follow @adamsmithtimes.