Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, President Obama's nominee to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, will address the Senate Committee on Health, Labor, and Pensions at 10 this morning in her first confirmation hearing. The agency has been without a permanent head since Obama took office; Obama's first nomination for HHS Secretary, Sen. Tom Daschle, flopped over Daschle's tax impropriety. Obama then nominated Sebelius March 2.
A number of Bush-era appointees remain in senior positions at the agency (including Steve Galson, the former FDA official who signed the non-approvable letter for over-the-counter access to emergency contraception for women younger than 18, who's both Acting Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services and Acting Surgeon General). And Obama has proposed an ambitious health care reform agenda, which he says he wants to pass this year and which forms a cornerstone of his economic recovery plan. In other words, the agency needs a leader, sooner rather than later. Sebelius, a two-term Democratic governor of a red state, and former insurance commissioner, has technical and bipartisan experience that suggest she's a strong choice.
Yet anti-choicers greeted Sebelius's nomination with fury, claiming that, as LifeNews put it [13], she "has one of the most radical pro-abortion record of any elected official." They decried Sebelius's supposed connection to Kansas abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, arguing that the fact that Sebelius recruited a Democratic challenger to Republican Attorney General Phill Kline [14] (who prosecuted Tiller despite no evidence of misconduct) meant Tiller and Sebelius were engaged in a conspiracy. Just last Friday, Tiller was acquitted on all misdemeanor charges. (A medical board subsequently announced it would be investigating similar charges.)
Late last week, Sebelius signed an anti-choice bill, rushed to a vote just days after she was nominated [15], that mandates that clinics offer women the opportunity to view an ultrasound or listen to fetal heartbeat. The legislation also requires that the state create and distribute pamphlets and a video about abortion. The Kansas Department of Health and the Environment will be responsible for the language in the pamphlet; ProKanDo's Julie Burkhart says they'll work with the Department to ensure that the language is medically accurate and unbiased. (The pamphlet will be required to list all locations that provide free ultrasounds, which are typically crisis pregnancy centers.)