This story has been updated with new information.

Cecile Richards, daughter of former Texas Gov. Ann Richards and a national champion for abortion rights, died Monday surrounded by her family after an extended battle with cancer, her family confirmed.

She was 67.

“Our hearts are broken today but no words can do justice to the joy she brought to our lives,” the family’s statement said, “We are grateful to the doctors and health care workers who provided her excellent care and the friends, family and well-wishers who have been by her side during this challenging time.”

Richards grew up in a family steeped in Democratic politics. Her mother was elected to the Travis County Commissioners Court in the mid-1970s, and that post helped vault the future governor to statewide office when she won the race for state treasurer in 1982. Cecile’s father, David Richards, is an attorney and a Democratic activist. He and Ann Richards divorced in 1984.

Cecile Richards, the former national president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, played largely a behind-the-scenes role during and after her mother’s ascension up the political ladder, said friend Jason Stanford, a press aide in the Richards administration. Her forte, Stanford said, was organizing and motivating progressives on behalf of causes.

“When she was dealing with organizers, when she was trying to get people excited before a block-walk, or she was talking to the people who worked at a Planned Parenthood facility, that’s when she really shone,” Stanford told the American-Statesman. “Ann Richards looked like a star in front of people, in front of crowds. She was a natural performer. Cecile was a natural organizer.”

Those organizational skills came into play amid high drama inside the Texas Capitol on the evening of June 25, 2013, when Democratic state Sen. Wendy Davis of Fort Worth embarked on a 13-hour filibuster to derail a bill that aimed to further restrict abortion rights.

Richards was instrumental in building a mushrooming crowd of thousands of protesters at the Capitol and hundreds inside the Senate gallery, where their noise-making and demonstrations helped run out the clock before the Republican-led chamber could hold its vote.

Although the measure ultimately passed in a special legislative session, the event put abortion rights front and center on the Texas political landscape.

“Like never before, people in Texas are standing up to demand that politicians respect women’s ability to make our own personal medical decisions, and the whole country is watching,” Richards said at the time. “Partisanship and ambition are not unusual in a state Capitol, but here, in Texas, right now, it has risen to a level of profound irresponsibility and the raw abuse of power.”

In an emotional interview, Davis called Richards an inspiration whose causes extended beyond abortion rights.

“I often thought of her as my North Star,” Davis said in an interview. “When I would get tired and burnt out, I’d just think about Cecile, who just, no matter what, you know, such a committed fighter for justice and for people across the country, and you couldn’t be tired in the face of that.”

Davis noted that in the 1990s, Richards founded the Texas Freedom Network as a counterweight to conservative forces she saw as trying to use legislation to blur the lines between church and state. In the weeks leading up to her death, Davis said, Richards was planning a conference in Austin next month at which people whose lives had been affected by the loss of reproductive freedom could share their stories.

“That was just sort of part and parcel of everything she touched,” Davis said.

Former state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, a San Antonio Democrat who was a Davis ally and a key player in the chamber on the night of the filibuster, remembered Richards as “the heart and the champion” in the effort to organize the protests and helped bring more than 100,000 viewers nationwide to the Senate’s livestream.

“Cecile had the savvy to message and empower,” Van de Putte told the Statesman. “But you can’t do it unless people know. And she was integral with not just Planned Parenthood, but the network of different women organizations to make sure that they knew what the struggle was about.”

Ann Richards’ ascension to the national spotlight had the byproduct of also introducing, albeit indirectly, Cecile Richards to a wider audience. Ann Richards, then state treasurer, was invited to give the keynote address at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, where she noted that she was a grandmother of “four nearly perfect grandchildren.”

She was referring to the children of Cecile and her husband, Kirk Adams, and photographs and videos of the future governor, her daughter and then-toddler granddaughter Lily Adams on the convention floor were printed and broadcast across the country.

Two months to the day before her death, then-President Joe Biden awarded Richards the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

“Through her work to lift up the dignity of workers, defend and advance women’s reproductive rights and equality, and mobilize Americans to exercise their power to vote, she has carved an inspiring legacy,” Biden said in a Nov. 20 post on social media.

Margaret Justus, a former adviser to Ann Richards and longtime friend to Cecile, recalled that while in high school the younger Richards was called into the principal’s office for leading a black arm band protest against the Vietnam War.

“It’s one thing to be born to a remarkable mother and father,” Justus, a Democratic strategist and founder of the Ann Richards Legacy Project, told the Statesman. “It’s another to blaze her own trail to become a nationally recognized leader and receive the Medal of Freedom for your outstanding public service work, especially for women’s reproductive rights.”

Funeral arrangements had not been set as of Monday.

Richards is survived by her father, David Richards; husband Kirk Adams; daughters Lily and Hannah and son Daniel Adams; grandson Teddy Adams; son-in-law Corey Ciorciari and daughter-in-law Natalie Compton; and siblings Ellen, Dan and Clark Richards.

The family’s statement invited mourners “to put on some New Orleans jazz, gather with friends and family over a good meal” and reflect on Richards’ words and deeds.

“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.’”