Shortly after her father’s inauguration as president, Ivanka Trump met with Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards. But the meeting has not quelled anger over what many progressives see as the First Daughter’s silence on the women’s issues she claims to champion.
Trump quietly reached out to the Planned Parenthood president, Politico reported Thursday, in the hopes of discussing about the controversial topic of abortion. Planned Parenthood confirmed the meeting took place and said it was aimed at informing Trump of the facts about Planned Parenthood’s funding and the range of services it provides in addition to abortions.
“The purpose of the meeting, from Cecile’s point of view, was to make sure that Ivanka fully understood what Planned Parenthood does, how it is funded, and why it would be a terrible idea for Planned Parenthood to be removed from being able to see Medicaid patients,” Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told Politico. “The main thing that Cecile Richards was doing was explaining that the money doesn’t actually go to abortions — we get reimbursed the same way a hospital does. We were clearing up misinformation about how this works.”
Trump, whose husband Jared Kushner was already an adviser to the President, recently took a West Wing job herself, and after concerns were raised about her informal role, said she would become an official government employee — although without a salary. She has pushed back on critics who say she is “complicit” in her father’s administration and said she wants to be a “force for good” in pushing for women’s economic empowerment.
Since moving to Washington, the eldest Trump daughter has met with other liberal leaders including Marcia Greenberger, co-president the National Women’s Law Center, and Judy Lichtman, senior adviser to the National Partnership for Women and Family, according to Politico.
However, these women have not stopped criticizing Trump just because they have met with her. Richards spoke out against the first daughter on Wednesday night, just hours before news broke about their previous meeting. “Anyone who works in this White House is responsible for addressing why women are in the cross-hairs of basically every single policy we’ve seen in this administration,” Richards said about Trump while speaking at the Women in the World summit in New York City Wednesday evening.