Caitlin Hall

In his State of the Union address last month, the president did an admirable job of placating a growing mass of citizens wary of the administration's ultra-conservative agenda. His promises were liberal and laudable (and to some, unbelievable).

However, the most telling part of his speech might have come at the very end: "The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world; it is God's gift to humanity. We Americans have faith in ourselves but not in ourselves alone. We do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history. May he guide us now."

Those words are, at the least, indicative of the attitude his administration has of late advanced concerning reproductive rights. His stab at the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade ÷ declaring Jan. 20, two days prior to the celebration, "National Sanctity of Human Life Day" ÷ was unsettling, though relatively innocuous. His recent appointment of Dr. W. David Hager to lead the FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee, however, is truly dangerous.

A practicing obstetrician and gynecologist, Dr. Hager has proffered a number of opinions that are alarmingly unsound. He has publicly denounced condom campaigns, advancing the medically unfounded claim that they do not reduce the risk of STD transmission. He refuses to prescribe birth control pills to unwed patients and opposes the use of emergency contraception. He aided the Christian Medical Association's petition to revoke FDA approval of the abortion drug mifepristone, formerly known as RU-486.

Additionally, Hager has co-authored two books, "Stress and the Woman's Body" and "As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now." In them, he counsels women to turn to prayer, rather than medicine, for help in battling such ailments as headaches, premenstrual syndrome, postpartum depression and eating disorders. Even more alarming, he claims it is "dangerous to compartmentalize life into categories of Christian truth and secular truth."

The appointment of Dr. Hager, who holds a purely nominal professorship at the University of Kentucky, is a direct and deliberate assault on reproductive rights in America. As director of the committee, he is responsible for recommendations concerning the FDA approval of mifepristone and is in a unique position to push for the revocation of that approval. He will have oversight authority for studies concerning the efficacy of hormone-replacement therapy for the treatment of menopause. Given such responsibilities, his "turn to God, not to medicine" approach to healing is dismaying.

That his appointment was one made on the sole basis of politics is evident from the other candidates passed over for the post ÷ the former dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health and the director of maternal and fetal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. Despite many internal FDA recommendations to the contrary, his position was offered on a permanent, rather than a trial, basis.

Furthermore, traditional protocol was cast by the wayside in Hager's nomination. The president took no action on the committee for two years after assuming office, thus allowing its charter to lapse. In such an event, he and his advisors have the authority to nominate an entirely new set of members to the committee, circumventing the customary procedure of internal review by experts in relevant fields.

This virtually overlooked appointment is a major blow for the advancement of safe and reliable medical treatments for women. There is a place for faith healing, but not in the context of a federal committee charged with making critical recommendations concerning reproductive healthcare. Through his selection, the president has reinforced his precedent of making poor choices for half the country's population based on religious sentimentalities.

It is not true that there is danger in "(compartmentalizing) life into categories of Christian truth and secular truth"; in fact, our Constitution virtually mandates the opposite conclusion. The real danger lies in the unholy marriage of state and religion that has become the hallmark of the Bush administration.