NEW YORK, NY – APRIL 20: Presenter Barbara Bush speaks onstage during the Housing Works Groundbreaker Awards Dinner at Metropolitan Pavilion on April 20, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Gary Gershoff/Getty Images for Housing Works)
Former President George W. Bush’s daughter, Barbara Pierce Bush, will deliver the keynote address at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser in North Texas.
Bush, the CEO and co-founder of Global Health Corps (GHC), is headlining Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas’s 2017 Fort Worth luncheon, reports the Texas Tribune.
Bush’s public appearance before the group is striking, given that her father, President George W. Bush, was a staunch abortion opponent during his time as Texas governor and as president.
But it’s not entirely unexpected. Bush’s mother, former First Lady Laura Bush, has expressed support for the legality of abortion on a handful of occasions. The younger Bush, the CEO and co-founder of Global Health Corps, called Planned Parenthood an “exceptional organization” in a June New York Times interview, and attended a fundraiser for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in Paris in October.
There’s a strong Texas connection in all of this: The president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America is Cecile Richards, the daughter of the late Texas Gov. Ann Richards.
Bush’s father ousted Richards from the Governor’s Mansion in 1994. Many political observers viewed that campaign as — at least in part — revenge for Richards’ acerbic 1988 Democratic National Convention keynote speech mocking the GOP nominee. It was Bush’s grandfather, George H.W. Bush.