The activist modernized Planned Parenthood and transformed the organization into a formidable political player.

Ten days before the 2016 election, I was standing in a cinderblock room in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with Cecile Richards and other leaders of prominent women’s groups, all of us out to make the case for Hillary Clinton’s historic run for President.

Richards was a major force in Texas and national politics. Like her mother, former governor Ann Richards, Cecile spent most of her life rallying for progressive causes. Richards was a labor organizer, a staffer to Representative Nancy Pelosi, and then president of Planned Parenthood from 2006 to 2018.

Cecile Richards, a women’s rights crusader who served as president of Planned Parenthood as the nation approached a critical inflection point over reproductive freedom, has died, her family said Monday in a statement.

After a devastating cancer diagnosis, the reproductive rights champion fought a battle on two fronts. Here, printed in full for the first time, is a conversation from last summer with the icon, who died on Monday at age 67.