Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion “is on the ballot” in next year’s election in her second sitdown interview since testifying before Congress last week.
“In this coming presidential election, Roe v. Wade is on the ballot,” Richards told The Guardian in an interview published Thursday. “The battle lines were drawn last week. This isn’t about Planned Parenthood or fetal tissue … it’s about whether abortion is going to be legal any more in this country.”
Richards appeared before a congressional committee last week at a hearing prompted by undercover videos showing her organization’s involvement in supplying aborted fetal tissue for medical research. While Planned Parenthood says it has done nothing wrong, the footage has sparked a major campaign by Republicans to investigate the group and try to strip its federal funds.
As Richards sat before the House Oversight Committee, Republicans drilled her on how the women’s health and abortion provider spends its money, particularly the federal funds it receives through Medicaid reimbursements and family planning grants.
Richards expressed outrage at how Republicans conducted the interview, telling the Guardian she was “stunned by the total lack of civility and raw use of power, particularly against the women that we serve.”
“You had folks who really knew very little either about women’s health, or what we do, and apparently didn’t even want to know,” she said.
Richards, who has led Planned Parenthood since 2006, also blasted the GOP presidential candidates for their near-uniform opposition to her organization, which provides millions of low-income American women with healthcare but is also the country’s largest abortion provider. All of the candidates have said Planned Parenthood should no longer receive taxpayer funds.
“In this primary, I think they’ve moved even further to the right than Gov. Romney,” said Richards, referring to Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee for president.
