Firestorm Brewing Over FDA Nominee

(AP)  A physician who pushed the Food and Drug Administration to ban the abortion pill RU-486 is in line to become an FDA advisor on reproductive health, drawing fire from women's groups that urged the Bush administration Wednesday to retract the choice.

Dr. W. David Hager is a University of Kentucky obstetrician-gynecologist and fairly well-known specialist on gynecologic infections. He also has written popular books asserting the healing power of prayer, and in August was a spokesman for the Christian Medical Association's petition asking FDA to ban the abortion pill.

Hager is a candidate for the FDA's influential advisory committee that considers reproductive health issues. This committee in 1996 recommended approval of the abortion pill, but on Nov. 12 is poised to consider a far different controversy - the dangers of post-menopausal hormone therapy.

The National Organization for Women on Wednesday joined six other groups that support abortion rights to call Hager's selection a conflict of interest in the name of ideology.

His abortion pill stance isn't the only issue, Planned Parenthood vice president Susanne Martinez said.

"Dr. W. David Hager's recommendations to patients with premenstrual syndrome? Read scripture," she said. "There is no place for such 'theological gynecology' on this important committee."

But the conservative Family Research Council responded that Hager is a well-respected physician who has served on government advisory panels before, and is being unfairly targeted because of personal beliefs.

The abortion rights supporters say "that even if a candidate is well-qualified and a good doctor, they can't be an outspoken Christian and get appointed to the FDA or any other post that has the power to influence abortion policy," council president Ken Connor said.

Hager has not yet been formally appointed to the committee, according to Health and Human Services spokesman Bill Pierce. "It's far from done," says Pierce.

The FDA has not said it will ask the newly reconstituted committee - memberless for two years - to discuss the abortion pill, so far maintaining that the pill needs no additional scrutiny.

Hager is not being considered to head the 11-member committee, Pierce said. He wouldn't say who nominated Hager, but called the Kentucky doctor "an outstanding physician."

Such public uproar is highly unusual over advisory committees, which are influential but make no binding decisions and usually operate far from the limelight.

Hager did not return an Associated Press call in which he was asked to comment on the situation.


By Lauran Neergaard