Cecile Richards’ death was a gut punch. But her legacy is more important now than ever.

This is an adapted excerpt from the Jan. 21 episode of “Morning Joe.”

Longtime abortion rights activist and former head of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, died Monday at the age of 67, following a battle with brain cancer. It happened just hours before President Donald Trump was sworn in for a second term in office.

At first, for me and many women I know, the news was a gut punch. My phone started blowing up with broken heart emojis and messages of grief. The news was discouraging to the point of despair.

And yet, upon further reflection, I realized quickly that Cecile’s life should guide us. Nothing stopped her no matter the setback, political or personal.

After the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022, Cecile continued to fight, looking for and creating new ways to give women a platform for their voices to be heard. On “Morning Joe,” we have shared nightmare stories of women suffering unnecessarily or coming close to death because of existing abortion bans. Many of those stories came to light because of Cecile, even as she was battling an aggressive form of brain cancer.

In October, Cecile joined me and several of those women brave enough to tell their stories on “Morning Joe.” At the time, she was facing the effects of her cancer. Still, she shared an important message:

These problems are not going away, win lose or draw. The stories that these women have told, we have dozens if not hundreds more. These are not political stories. These are stories of women and families and daughters and granddaughters. The risk and the struggle to get health care in like almost half the states in America, that’s a long-term fight.

Cecile’s struggle with her speech, her difficulty walking, and her perseverance through it all should lift us up through the next four years and beyond.

She recently told The 19th, “In all honesty, I fear it will take us a long time to restore the rights we once had. For people who face challenges based on race, geography, income and more, these inequities are deep-seated, intersectional and much more difficult to eradicate. We need to be ready for a multiyear fight.”

She was right. For many women in this country, lifesaving health care — abortion — is no longer an option, especially for women in 12 states with complete bans and four states that have six-week bans.

It may be that we work on extending the length of the bans as much as possible. It may be that we work for something better than we have now, step by step.

After her passing, Cecile’s family released a statement. It read, in part:

If you’d like to celebrate Cecile today, we invite you to put on some New Orleans jazz, gather with friends and family over a good meal, and remember something she said a lot over the last year: “It’s not hard to imagine future generations one day asking: ‘When there was so much at stake for our country, what did you do?’ The only acceptable answer is: ‘Everything we could.’

So with that in mind, in Cecile’s memory, let’s follow her lead.

Allison Detzel contributed.