She presides over the largest abortion business in the United States that has killed and injured women in abortions and fails to provide legitimate medical services for most pregnant women.
But that didn’t stop Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards from making the Time Magazine top 100 list of most influential people.
Richards clocked in at the 69th most influential spot in a list that fluctuated over the last few weeks as voters were able to declare a certain person influential or not. Richards had been at a higher position, but a small campaign on Twitter led by some pro-life advocates like Bryan Kemper of Stand True helped lower her ranking as pro-life people were persuaded to visit the Time web site to declare the abortion mogul not influential.
Nancy Pelosi, the pro-abortion former Speaker of the House who now leads the Democratic Party in the lower congressional chamber, wrote a glowing biography for the Time page devoted to her ranking. Pelosi served up effusive praise for her former chief of staff, never mentioning the word abortion and the more than 332,000 abortions that comprise nearly half of Planned Parenthood’s income:
To watch Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards at work is to see a portrait of grace, intellect and determination. Her family believes that public service is a noble calling; her mother, the remarkable Ann Richards, taught her that social justice is a cause worth fighting for. And Cecile has dedicated her abilities to progressive causes.
Cecile is a tenacious organizer, talented at both inside maneuvering and outside mobilization. She always wins. She leads with diplomacy and makes her case with facts, not hyperbole. That’s what I saw when she served as my deputy chief of staff; that’s what the nation sees as she leads Planned Parenthood.
Partly because of the respect legislators have for Cecile, being a woman is no longer a pre-existing condition. She’s now leading the charge against a comprehensive and radical attack on women’s health and reproductive freedom.
Cecile, 53, is a proud mother of three, a devoted wife and gracious company. But make no mistake: her resolve is steadfast. And American women are the better for it.
But pro-life advocates recall Richards as someone who is fast and loose with the truth. Apart from misleading people about the nature of her abortion business, she also lied about Planned Parenthood doing mammograms.
As LifeNews.com reported in February, Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards joined the talk show of pro-abortion activist Joy Behar and defended Planned Parenthood against legislation in Congress seeking to revoke its federal taxpayer funding. There, she lied about what Planned Parenthood does.
“If this bill ever becomes law, millions of women in this country are going to lose their health care access, not to abortion services, to basic family planning – you know, mammograms,” she claimed.
Last month, Live Action released videotaped footage of calls to 30 Planned Parenthood centers nationwide in 27 different states where abortion facility staff were asked whether or not mammograms could be performed on site. Every one of the Planned Parenthood centers admitted they could not do mammograms. Every Planned Parenthood, without exception, tells the women calling that they will have to go elsewhere for a mammogram, and many clinics admit that no Planned Parenthood clinics provide this breast cancer screening procedure.
“We don’t provide those services whatsoever,” admits a staffer at Planned Parenthood of Arizona while a staffer at Planned Parenthood’s Comprehensive Health Center clinic in Overland Park, Kansas tells a caller, “We actually don’t have a, um, mammogram machine, at our clinics.”
Live Action president Lila Rose says the new recordings further confirm Planned Parenthood’s corruption.
“Planned Parenthood is first and foremost an abortion business, but Planned Parenthood and its allies will say almost anything to try and cover up that fact and preserve its taxpayer funding,” she told LifeNews.com. “It’s not surprising that an organization found concealing statutory rape and helping child sex traffickers would misrepresent its own services so brazenly, playing on women’s fears in order to protect their tax dollars.”
The Time Magazine list also included a couple of pro-life advocates as pro-life Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and pro-life New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie both ranked about 25 spots higher than Richards. Rep. Paul Ryan, a pro-life Wisconsin congressman, finished another 10 spots ahead of Bachmann. On the pro-abortion side, Joe Biden made the list, just ahead of Michelle Obama and both were dozens of places higher than Barack Obama.
