Statement by NOW President Christian F. Nunes
WASHINGTON–Today’s vote in the U.S. Senate to confirm Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services is more than a dangerous mistake—it’s the opening curtain of a tragedy that will take a horrifying toll on millions of Americans—with women and children paying the highest price.
Women need a secretary of HHS who will defend the full range of reproductive health care, and not attack access to medication abortion, or allow emergency room doctors to ignore the law and let pregnant people die rather than ensure they receive the emergency care they need.
We need a Secretary of HHS who advocates for innovative, evidence-based science—not conspiracy theories that will endanger lives. Someone who wants Americans to have access to the best vaccines on Earth—and not someone who claimed, “there is no vaccine that is safe and effective.”
Women can’t afford someone who worked for years on lawsuits claiming that the vaccine against HPV, a leading cause of cervical cancer, caused injuries. What’s more, Kennedy profited personally from these suits and has said he’ll keep his financial stake in the litigation once in government.
And children certainly can’t afford someone in charge of the life-saving $8 billion dollar Vaccines for Children program with Kennedy’s long history of questioning vaccine policy, or his endorsement of conspiracy theories attacking the safe and effective MMR vaccine to prevent measles and mumps.
This is not what Americans voted for. They didn’t vote for a rise in dangerous diseases we thought we had eradicated long ago. They didn’t vote to bring back polio and measles. They didn’t vote to ban life-saving vaccines.
This has nothing to do with partisan politics or party identification. There are no Democratic or Republican diseases. Public health is just that—something that affects the entire public. NOW will always stand for the greater good and the health of everyone, and we will resist those who put conspiracies and disinformation above science, medicine and the health of every American.
RFK Jr.’s confirmation turns back the clock on public health for women, but we will fight to reset that standard back to where most Americans want and need it to be.
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