Trump Appoints Anti-Abortion Activist To Senior Post With Department Of Health & Human Services

The Associated Press reports:

The White House says President Donald Trump is appointing the former president of a leading anti-abortion organization to a senior position at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Charmaine Yoest, who actively supported Trump in his campaign, will serve as assistant secretary of public affairs at HHS. From 2008 until February 2016, she was president of Americans United for Life, which campaigned at the federal and state level for tough restrictions on abortion.

Among the many state bills backed by the group under Yoest’s leadership were measures that would ban most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, require women seeking abortions to undergo a sonogram and impose tough regulations on abortion clinics that could lead to their closure.

And of course she’s also anti-LGBT:



In an address to the radically anti-choice and anti-LGBTQ World Congress of Families, which at the time was led by her mother, right-wing activist Janice Shaw Crouse, Yoest touted AUL’s success in passing anti-abortion laws and described their work as akin to the struggles of abolitionists and leaders of the civil rights movement, framing it as the modern civil rights and social justice fight against the “culture of death.”

“Focus on the state houses and test the limits of Roe v. Wade,” she told World Congress of Families attendees. “The story of the next several decades is one of trench warfare and gaining ground under the radar.” At a March for Life event, she similarly described her group as pushing a “stealth strategy” against legal abortion.