01/21/25

Good morning! It’s Tuesday, January 21st.

National Hugging Day.

(But like, only if they want. Okay?)

And now, the news.

Cecile Richards

-via The Texas Tribune, American Demagogues

“It’s not hard to imagine future generations one day asking: ‘When there was so much at stake for our country, what did you do?’ The only acceptable answer is: ‘Everything we could.’”

That is a quote from Cecile Richards, former Planned Parenthood president and daughter of Texas Governor Ann Richards.

Cecile died Monday morning.

She was 67 years old.

This is not the episode I intended to make when I woke up Monday morning, but here we are.

Everything we could.

As I mentioned, Cecile’s mom was Ann Richards. The second woman to be elected governor of Texas. The first was Miriam Amanda Ferguson, better known as Ma Ferguson. Her husband, Pa Richards, served as governor from 1915 to 1917. During his second term, he was investigated by the State Attorney General for actions taken against the University of Texas. He was impeached by the Texas State Senate, and prohibited him from holding state office in Texas again.

Following that, Ma Ferguson ran for governor. The idea being hey, you can’t elect that guy anymore but if you elect me… that guy will still be around to offer advice. Literally, one of the campaign slogans was "Me for Ma, and I Ain't Got a Durned Thing Against Pa.”

So you know… she did make history! She did win that election! But… you know… actually, you know what? It’s a very Texas story. The nickname, the slogan, the court case… I love Texas so much that I got it tattooed on my body, and this really does feel like a classic Texas story.

In kind of a, respectfully, cliched way.

But the story of the second female governor of Texas is also a classic Texas story – because it’s a story of reliance.

When Ann Richards was just 39, she got Sarah Weddington elected to the Texas legislature. Prior to that, Weddington successfully argued Roe v Wade in front of the Supreme Court.

Nineteen years later, after getting sober, and divorced, she ran for governor of Texas.

I mean… it’s 1990 and Ann Richards wins the governorship of Texas on a promise to increase the rolls of women and minorities in what she called “a new Texas”… and she won!

She served for one term, losing her reelection bid to, of all people, George W Bush.

But she spent the rest of her life offering council to other liberal leaders before she died in 2006.

But recall that first part of her story – getting Sarah Weddington elected to the Texas legislature.

Ann’s daughter, Cecile, was 16 years old during that campaign.

Two years later, Cecile went Brown University, where, according to her, she “majored in history, but minored in agitating.” During this time, she interned for an organization implementing the newly passed Title IX and she even skipped walking at her college graduation to instead join in with a group of students who unfurled a “Free South Africa” banner, calling on the college to divest its financial holdings in Apartheid-era South Africa. It took a few years, but the university eventually did exactly that.

After graduation, she worked in labor organizing before joining her mom’s campaign. Eventually, she founded a grassroots organization to educate and turn out voters before she found herself running Planned Parenthood, which she later described as a “natural extension” of her time in labor.

For twelve years, Richards transformed Planned Parenthood into the group it is today. Granted, it was the largest provider of reproductive care in the country when she got the keys, but under her leadership, Planned Parenthood grew to the juggernaut it is today. Including reinvigorating its political advocacy arm.

And of course, as it got bigger, the attacks grew. On the organization and the right to bodily autonomy at large.

If you’ve been listening to this show for a while, you might already know the markers for where we’re going, but here we are.

Because one of those attacks took place in 2013 – when the Texas State Senate tried to pass a bill that would ban abortions in the state after 20 weeks as well as require abortion clinics to meet the same standards that a full-on hospital-style surgical center would.

But there’s just something about a Texas woman.

And so State Senator Wendy Davis literally stood for 13 hours to prevent that bill from passing.

Thirteen hours.

And hours after the clock struck midnight, after the chaos of the filibuster, a text was read to the hundreds of people waiting in the rotunda to hear the fate of abortion rights in the state.

The text simply said this: “The Lt. Governor has agreed that SB 5 is dead.”

It was read to the crowd by Cecile Richards

41 years after she joined with her mom to get Sarah Weddington elected, she stood in that rotunda to announce that, for the moment, the right to bodily autonomy was protected in Texas.

Five years later she left Planned Parenthood, and in the years since she helped found a group working to get more women into Democratic politics, called Supermajority, started a storytelling collective called Abortion in America, co-chaired a PAC dedicated to “holding Republicans accountable” called American Bridge, and helped start an abortion chatbot, called Charley, to help people in states that have banned abortion get information about medication abortion.

She never stopped.

Cecile Richards was a machine. An inspiration. A relentless fighter.

She was also just a person.

A person who held deep beliefs and spent her life in service of those beliefs.

It’s hard to imagine a world without her.

At the beginning of this episode I said that this wasn’t the episode I thought I’d be making today, and that’s true.

Because while this is not a surprise, Richards announced she had incurable brain cancer in January of 2024, six months after her diagnosis, it’s feels impossible that we have to do this, these next four years, without such a relentless fighter.

But to be honest, this episode was always going to be about something bigger than an inauguration that took place.

That guy is going to take up a lot of oxygen for the next four years. He’s going to be selfish and dangerous. He is going to be a threat to people we love, and a country we hold dear.

But he does not get everything.

These words are not for him.

These words are for us. These words, this episode, is a reminder that we are here in this moment and called to do something so much bigger than we ever imagined we could.

And so, here again, is that quote from Cecile Richards:

“It’s not hard to imagine future generations one day asking: ‘When there was so much at stake for our country, what did you do?’

The only acceptable answer is: ‘Everything we could.’”

And that’s it. That’s the news.

I’m proud of Cecile Richards. The world is better because she was here.

And because you’re here. Because we’re in this. Because it starts now… I’m proud of you.