In her new memoir, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards shares a “surreal” encounter with White House senior adviser Jared Kushner in which he reportedly offered to secure more federal funding for the reproductive health nonprofit—if it agreed to stop providing abortion care to women.
“Honestly, it felt almost like a bribe,” Richards writes in “Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead,” which was released Tuesday. “It was surreal, essentially being asked to barter away women’s rights for more money.”
At a meeting where his wife Ivanka Trump was also present, Kushner told Richards her organization “had made a big mistake by becoming ‘political,'” according to the book.
“He described his ideal outcome: a national headline reading ‘Planned Parenthood Discontinues Abortion Services,'” writes Richards, who announced recently that she would step down from her position as president later this year.
Planned Parenthood clinics first provided abortion care in 1970, when the procedure was legalized in New York. The organization also offers preventative care to women and men, STI testing, cancer screenings, and other health services.
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