Former Planned Parenthood CEO To Speak At Rutgers

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ — Cecile Richards, the former and controversial CEO of Planned Parenthood, will speak at Rutgers University next Monday, Nov. 12, the state university announced.

Rutgers did not yet disclose how much, if anything, they are paying Richards to speak. She has spoken at universities in the past, such as Georgetown, without being compensated.

She will speak on the main Rutgers campus in New Brunswick and the lecture will be open to the public, the school says. Richards is speaking as part of the Anita Ashok Datar Lecture on Women’s Global Health, which was named for a Rutgers graduate who was killed by terrorists while working in Mali.

Richards' lecture will be called “Advocating for Justice in Women’s Global Health" and it will be held at Trayes Hall at the Douglass Student Center on George Street Nov. 12 at 7 p.m.

In an interview with Rutgers Today, Richards said the ability for a woman to legally receive an abortion in the U.S. is "facing its biggest threat" since Roe v. Wade was established in 1973.

"This president made a campaign promise that he would only appoint justices to the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe v. Wade, so we have every reason to think access to safe and legal abortion is facing the biggest threat since it was decided," she said. "Here’s the good news, though: Public support for Roe v. Wade is at a record high. Seventy-one percent of Americans do not want to see it overturned. We cannot go back to the days when young, healthy women died in hospital emergency rooms and back alleys – the result of botched, illegal abortions."

Anita Ashok Datar was a Rutgers graduate who was one of 21 people killed on Nov. 20, 2015 during a terrorist attack in Bamako, Mali, where she was working to improve the region’s response to HIV/AIDS and reproductive health options.

Photo of Cecile Richards provided by Rutgers University.