By Dave Andrusko
Dr. Mandy Cohen is the new director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She succeeds Dr. Rochelle Walensky who retired. A month into her new position, she gave an interview to Alice Park of TIME magazine.
In case the reader might be tempted to stop reading half-way through and miss the major point of the interview, the headline reads, ‘I’m So Disappointed’ About Abortion Status in the U.S., Says New CDC Director.”
Park asks
Especially in the past year, women’s reproductive health has been really a hot topic in the country, with the restrictions placed on contraception and abortion. What role does the CDC have in ensuring that women continue to have access to as many healthy, evidence based choices as possible?
Cohen essentially skips answering the abortion part of the question, so Park tees it up again:
Just this week, there was the appeals court decision backing a Texas judge’s ruling on restricting mifepristone. The abortion pill remains available for now, but this is going to continue to be debated in the courts. As a physician, and a public health leader, how does that strike you?
Cohen as much as says “thank you” and in answering, throws in that she is a mother!
Well, I’m so disappointed that we are here, that we are having the conversation to revisit whether or not women should have access to health care when they need it. And, you know, I will say as a mom of two daughters, a physician, and now the director of the CDC, I’m going to continue to make sure that we are working to make sure women have access to care when they need it, and that they have medical treatment when they need it.
Come to think of it, in responding to the first question, Cohen did say “The mission of the CDC is to protect and improve health.”
Any chance Cohen would push to “protect and improve the health” of the nearly 900,000 unborn babies aborted in this country every year?
As part of an Administration that has richly earned the reputation of the most pro-abortion ever, to ask the question is to answer it.