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Richards spoke on a panel at the Women in the World conference Wednesday in New York
"They've come at us ... in a way that is much harsher than I even imagined," she said of Trump's administration
Amid ongoing calls to defund Planned Parenthood by many conservative Republicans in Congress, the group’s leader declared Wednesday that they’d face less fire if there were more legislators “that could get pregnant.”
“They’ve come at us and come at women in a way that is much harsher than I even imagined,” Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said during a panel at the Women in the World conference Wednesday in New York. “Frankly, if we had more members of the United States Congress that could get pregnant, we would quit fighting about Planned Parenthood and access to reproductive health care.”
Richards also accused the women in President Donald Trump’s administration, including his daughter, Ivanka Trump, of not doing enough to promote women’s interests in the White House.
“Anyone who works in this White House is responsible for addressing why women are in the crosshairs of basically every single policy that we’ve seen out of this administration,” she said.
Richards made her comments at the eighth annual Women in the World Summit. The conference features panels with women and men who discuss issues affecting women. Richards was on a panel that discussed feminism and how to raise children – of both genders – to be feminists.
Richards also said her mother, former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, would’ve given Trump a “go, with 140 characters every day.”
When asked what her late mother would’ve said about Trump, Richards said she wished she knew.
“It’s probably – we couldn’t repeat it here,” Richards said.
Democrat Ann Richards was an outspoken feminist and the second woman ever to be elected governor of Texas, serving from 1991 to 1995 and defeated for reelection by Republican George W. Bush.