Trump wants an anti-abortion extremist to run the CDC
This piece first appeared in our weekly newsletter, The Fallout.
The confirmation hearing for longtime anti-abortion advocate and former Congressman David Weldon to run the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) begins this week, and, wow, that’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.
Weldon’s name may sound familiar to many of you, even if you can’t immediately place it. He is the architect of Weldon Amendment. This is one of several refusal-of care policies that allow hospitals and other healthcare facilities to refuse abortion treatment because of religious or conscience objections without jeopardizing He is also stridently against abortion, supporting bill after law targeting access and rights to abortion. And to top it all off, he’s a doctor who is anti-vaccine–just the kind of guy you want running the nation’s top public health agency during a measles outbreak.
Like so many of President Donald Trump’s other executive agency nominees, Weldon hasn’t been chosen to lead the CDC–he’s been chosen to break it.
“As a physician, providing life-saving health care in this fragile, ever changing political landscape, I know that Weldon’s leadership is the antithesis of the CDC’s mission and will further propel our country into a public health crisis with disproportionate impacts on the most vulnerable members of our community,” Dr. Jamila Perritt, president and CEO of Physicians for Reproductive Health and an OB-GYN in Washington, D.C., said in a statement prior to Weldon’s hearing.
In her statement, Perritt pointed out that Weldon has largely been able to fly under the radar.
“Make no mistake, although we are all at risk, should Weldon become the next CDC Director, he will have access to sensitive public health data that could put Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and those in rural communities at greater risk of surveillance and criminalization as they seek the care they need.”
Like so many of President Donald Trump’s other executive agency nominees, Weldon hasn’t been chosen to lead the CDC–he’s been chosen to break it. Weldon, like many of President Donald Trump’s other executive agency nominees, has been chosen to break the CDC.
