In a revealing passage from Cecile Richards’ new memoir, the Planned Parenthood chief says Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were, during Donald Trump’s 2016 transition as president-elect, so eager to be recognized as shrewd political dealmakers that the soon-to-be first daughter and her husband made an offer that felt like a “bribe”: an increase in federal funding for Planned Parenthood in exchange for its agreement to stop providing abortions.
Richards says she was leery of taking the meeting in January 2017, but, after the defeat of Planned Parenthood’s champion, Hillary Clinton, she was open to finding possible new allies in the president-elect’s more moderate-leaning daughter and son-in-law.
“Everyone at Planned Parenthood was hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. We brainstormed, planned, and made lists of anyone who might be a potential ally in the administration” she said.
She went on to say that Kushner told her Planned Parenthood “had made a big mistake by becoming ‘political.’ The main issue, he explained, was abortion,” Richards writes.
“If Planned Parenthood wanted to keep our federal funding, we would have to stop providing abortions. He described his ideal outcome: a national headline reading ‘Planned Parenthood Discontinues Abortion Services.’”
According to Make Trouble, Kushner said that if Richards agreed to the plan then funding could increase, but he urged them to “move fast.”
Since the meeting, Richards and Ivanka Trump have clashed publicly mainly because of Ivanka Trump’s decision to remain silent about Republican attempts to defund Planned Parenthood.
While Ivanka Trump’s team has yet to respond to request for a comment, she did defend her decision to remain quiet after a bill passed last year that permits states to refuse funding to organizations that provide abortions.
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