Giving Compass' Take:

• In her new memoir, Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America Cecile Richards shares her story of fighting for reproductive rights and calls for women to continue her work.

• How can philanthropy support strong protections for women's reproductive rights? How can women's healthcare progress beyond reproductive healthcare? 

• Learn why maternal mortality is increasing as infant mortality decreases in the U.S.

Though she is now president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Cecile Richards’s leadership and activism, organizing and civil disobedience in the name of social justice, spans virtually her entire life.

As head of what is perhaps the most visible symbol of feminism in this country, Richards routinely faces down attacks from anti-abortion and far-right foes and has fended off repeated efforts to defund and derail the women’s health care organization. Perhaps no single episode has raised her public profile as much as the five-hour grilling she endured by Republican male members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in 2015.

“Here’s what I learned sitting in front of that committee,” Richards writes in her book, Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead. “Focus on the people who are counting on you, not the ones who are trying to drag you down.”

Now, as she prepares to leave Planned Parenthood after 12 years, her sentiments about never-ending trouble seem inarguable. Uncertainty hangs over women’s rights issues in this country, from reproductive health to the gender pay gap.

Richards believes that now, more than ever, women are the most important political force in America. “We have enormous power to change the direction of this country, and it’s time to use it.”

Read the full article about Cecile Richards by Lornet Turnbull at YES! Magazine.