Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 22, 2024 / 15:35 pm
President Joe Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the highest civilian honor in the country — to Cecile Richards, an abortion activist who was the president of Planned Parenthood for more than a decade.
Although the Medal of Freedom is often awarded in a public ceremony, the president gave the medal to Richards in a private ceremony on Wednesday, Nov. 20. This is the 37th person to whom Biden awarded the Medal of Freedom but the first who is known primarily for abortion advocacy.
“With absolute courage, [Richards] fearlessly leads us forward to be the America we say we are — a nation of freedom,” Biden, the second Catholic president in American history, said in a post on X late Wednesday afternoon.
“Through her work to lift up the dignity of workers, defend and advance women’s reproductive rights and equality, and mobilize Americans to exercise their power to vote, she has carved an inspiring legacy,” Biden added.
Richards reposted the president’s remarks on her X account, thanking Biden and First Lady Jill Biden for “all you’ve done to support women’s health and rights.”
“Such an honor representing abortion rights and the need for health care for all,” Richards said.
Richards was the president of Planned Parenthood from February 2006 until she stepped down in April 2018. The number of abortions performed by Planned Parenthood increased by more than 10% during her tenure. In 2006, the organization performed 289,750 abortions but increased that number to 321,384 abortions in 2016.
Planned Parenthood abortionists completed about 320,000 abortions each year during her time as president, which amounts to more than 3 million abortions under her leadership.
According to the White House, the Presidential Medal of Freedom is reserved for people “who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public, or private endeavors.”
Earlier this year, Richards announced that she was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer — the same type of cancer that claimed the life of Biden’s son Beau in 2015.
Biden’s views on abortion have shifted during his career. The president began serving his first term in the Senate in 1973, just days before the United States Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, which made abortion legal nationwide. At the time, Biden criticized the decision. He gradually moved toward a staunch pro-abortion stance over the next 50 years in politics.
When Roe v. Wade was overturned during his presidency in June 2022, Biden vowed to codify a national right to abortion into federal law and supported ending the prohibition on federal tax money directly paying for abortion.
During his presidency, the Biden administration sought to scale back religious freedom protections in abortion laws and moved to expand surgical abortion through the Department of Health and Human Services and chemical abortion through federal regulations. Other policies included funding for overseas organizations that promote abortion and a policy at the U.S. Department of Defense to fund abortion travel costs for service members and their families.
President-elect Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated president on Jan. 20, 2025, opposes federal restrictions on abortion, and he supports leaving abortion law to the states. He has vowed to protect religious freedom and is open to reenacting the federal ban on overseas abortion funding.
On Wednesday, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who will lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), penned an op-ed with the Wall Street Journal, which stated they will recommend ending federal funds for Planned Parenthood.
Biden’s support for abortion has put him at odds with Catholic bishops and the pope on the issue of life.
In April, Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation” and said that Biden “picks and chooses dimensions of the faith to highlight while ignoring or even contradicting other parts … especially in terms of the life issues.”
“There is a phrase that we have used in the past, a ‘cafeteria Catholic,’ [in which] you choose that which is attractive and dismiss that which is challenging,” Gregory said.
Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, accused Biden of “making a mockery of our Catholic faith” in May after the president made the sign of the cross while promoting abortion.
In 2022, Pope Francis said Biden should “talk to his pastor about that incoherence” when talking about Biden supporting abortion even though he is a Catholic.
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