Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner offered 'bribes' to stop abortions, Planned Parenthood CEO says
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, in her new memoir has said that President Donald Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, offered her a deal, which she described as a "bribe", in an attempt to stop providing abortions, People magazine reported.
Richards' memoir — Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead — mentions that she met Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in January 2017, and that the couple offered a hike in Planned Parenthood's federal funding if she stopped providing abortions through the organization.
"The main issue, he [Kushner] explained, was abortion. 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'" the magazine quoted Richards as saying.
Richards reportedly wrote in her memoir that Kushner, who is a White House senior aide, told her to "move fast" on her decision. She, however, declined to accept Kushner's proposal, saying: "It felt almost like a bribe."
She added that Kushner told her that the organization "had made a big mistake by becoming ‘political.’ "
"The main issue, he explained, was abortion," Richards wrote. "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.'"
Planned Parenthood provides at least a third of the 900,000 plus abortions performed in the United States every year. Reports state that the organization receives over $500 million on federal funding for services other than abortions.
The Planned Parenthood CEO said that she had invited the power couple for a meeting "to make sure that Ivanka Trump fully understood the important role Planned Parenthood plays in providing health care to millions of people and why it would be a disastrous idea to block people from accessing care at Planned Parenthood."
Richards' memoir was released on Tuesday and it reached No. 7 on Amazon's Best Sellers List on Wednesday morning.