Back in January of this year, Planned Parenthood announced that Cecile Richards would be stepping down after serving as the organization’s president for more than a decade. The decision came at an especially critical time in an ever-hostile fight with GOP lawmakers seeking to strip women of their reproductive rights.
Now, Planned Parenthood has introduced their new president, Dr. Leana Wen. The introduction video, posted to the organization’s Twitter account Wednesday, is incredibly inspiring.
Meet our new president, @DrLeanaWen. pic.twitter.com/kNTnYKzww7
— Planned Parenthood (@PPFA) September 12, 2018
Wen is an immigrant, who came to the U.S. from China as a young child and recalls her family relying on Planned Parenthood for healthcare. She describes her years as an ER physician and seeing a woman die after attempting to perform an abortion on herself.
Wen is obviously incredibly qualified for the job, having served as the Health Commissioner of Baltimore. In that position, she helped sue the Trump administration over their decision to end a federal grant for teen pregnancy prevention services two years early, and she won. She fought Trump’s gag rule, attempting to silence medical professionals and bar them from providing certain types of advice on abortion. She is clearly fiercely dedicated to fighting for women’s reproductive rights.
On top of all of that, by appointing a medical professional as Planned Parenthood’s President, rather than someone with a background in activism and politics, as Richards had, there is a clear message being sent that is vital in this fight: “Reproductive health care is health care. Women’s health care is health care. And health care has to be understood as a fundamental human right.”
Abortion has become so politicized that many people have forgotten that what Planned Parenthood provides is health care services. It is not an inherently political organization. It is a medical organization. And as Wen says in the video, “having a physician as the head of Planned Parenthood, it is a sign that what we are doing is mainstream medical care.”
For far too long, the GOP has been hijacking the narrative surrounding abortion, birth control, and women’s bodily autonomy and reproductive rights. This is a clear step in reclaiming that narrative.
This is an incredible honor and privilege. I’m ready to take on this fight with everything I have, and am proud to stand alongside millions of @PPFA supporters as we embark on this next chapter together.
— Leana Wen, M.D. (@DrLeanaWen) September 12, 2018
(image: Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
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