A few days after the 2018 March for Life, Cecile Richards, president of the nation’s largest abortion provider and “the iconic face of Planned Parenthood for over a decade” according to the Huffington Post, announced that she would be stepping down from her post. She is planning her exit for May, the month after her memoir is scheduled to be published, and is expected to play a role in fundraising and campaigning for Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections.
Planned Parenthood established a search committee to find Richards’ replacement and chose a novelist as its leader. New York Times columnist and author Anna Quindlen will lead the search committee — Planned Parenthood is calling her a “unique voice on behalf of women.”
The committee is full of media figures and activists, including a Dominican-American television journalist, a Democratic fundraiser, and members of Planned Parenthood’s board. At least one doctor will participate in the search to find Richards’ replacement: Dr. Luz Towns-Miranda. A longtime Planned Parenthood supporter, Towns-Miranda was described as an activist and the mother of “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda. Interestingly, she is not an obstetrician or a gynecologist, but a psychologist.
Rather than have medical professionals determining the course of its future and its leadership, the search committee confirms that Planned Parenthood is less about health and more about creating an “abortion culture,” utilizing financial leaders and media and entertainment figures to do so.
But as Planned Parenthood demonstrates its continued commitment to abortion on demand, the American people have shown that they support more restrictions on abortion than currently exist. A decade of research on public opinion about abortion by Marist, the polling company for the Wall Street Journal, NBC News and Thomson Reuters/McClatchy, shows that there is consensus among Americans on many aspects of what is often portrayed as a controversial issue.
This year’s poll found that 76 percent of Americans said they would limit abortion to — at most — the first three months of pregnancy. Just 12 percent said elective abortion should be permitted throughout an entire pregnancy.
The poll also found that a majority – 52 percent – said they believe undergoing an abortion will more likely do harm to a woman’s life than good. Majorities also said they would support a ban on elective abortion procedures after 20 weeks’ gestation and that they oppose abortions based on a fetal diagnosis of a condition like Down syndrome.
The poll also shows that a quarter of Democrats call themselves pro-life, and a majority of Democrats – 56 percent – said they would support a ban on elective abortion procedures after 20 weeks.
It goes to show that Planned Parenthood is way out of touch with mainstream America on the abortion issue, and would do well to start paying attention. The consensus in America is against abortion, and for major rollbacks on abortion access – not for the “abortion extremism” that Planned Parenthood represents.
Jeanne Mancini is president of the March for Life.