Anti-Abortion Leaders Take Significant Positions in Department of Health

This election continues to place terrible individuals in positions of real, tangible power who are spending every hour of every day implementing destructive policies.  Smart Dissent will continue to provide examples of those in power who you need to stay informed about so you can share this knowledge and together we can Be Smart and Actively Dissent.

In this case, we look at new leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services which is getting two anti-abortion crusaders in key positions and many more after them.

Charmaine Yoest, the former head of Americans United for Life, was named assistant secretary of health and human services in charge of public affairs late last week.   Teresa Manning, a former lobbyist for the National Right to Life Committee, is said to have been chosen for the post of deputy assistant secretary for population affairs.

Tom Price, the H.H.S. secretary, is also a committed abortion foe, and now, with these appointments, he has important allies in senior positions in his agency. The selection of Ms. Yoest and Ms. Manning is likely to set the stage for battles over the science that supports the role abortion and birth control play in promoting public health.

Regarding Ms. Yoest, who will oversee 90 employees and a budget of more than $30 million:

At Americans United for Life, Ms. Yoest declared that abortion opponents help women by shielding them from the procedure’s supposed risks. She has insisted that abortion increases a woman’s risk of breast cancer, a claim that the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have decisively rejected, based on an abundance of research.

She’ll help coordinate news releases from all parts of the agency, including the C.D.C. and the F.D.A. She’s the department’s chief Freedom of Information Act officer. And she’s in charge of its websites and digital campaigns.

Ms. Manning is an adament opponent of birth control and and contraception yet will now be in charge of exactly that.  “In fact, the incidence of contraception use and the incidence of abortion go up hand in hand,” she said on NPR in 2003.

Ms. Manning will be in charge of the Title X federal family planning program, which provides birth control access to mostly low-income and uninsured women.... what will happen to the government’s efforts [to promote birth control measure] in the hands of Ms. Manning, given her dismissal of the benefits of birth control?

Both women, who now lead the Department of HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, oppose the use of IUDs, the form of birth control that is most effective at preventing pregnancy, according to the C.D.C.

They think IUDs effectively cause abortions, even though that, too, runs contrary to the medical consensus. Now they could try to hold up federal funding to provide these devices to low-income women. IUDs have been crucial to making the biggest strides in years in reducing unplanned pregnancies, as public-health organizations and agencies work to increase the number of women who use them.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/02/opinion/abortion-charmaine-yoest-teresa-manning.html