President-elect Donald Trump announced last week that he is nominating former Florida Rep. Dave Weldon as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Weldon, a medical doctor and Army vet, spent 14 years in Congress as a Florida representative.
“I am thrilled to announce that former Congressman, Dr. Dave Weldon, is nominated to serve as Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In addition to being a Medical Doctor for 40 years, and an Army Veteran, Dave has been a respected conservative leader on fiscal and social issues, and served on the Labor/HHS Appropriations Subcommittee, working for Accountability on HHS and CDC Policy and Budgeting,” Trump said. “Dave also served in a leading role in Government Oversight and Reform Committee Hearings, addressing issues within HHS and CDC. Dave has successfully worked with the CDC to enact a ban on patents for human embryos,” he continued.
Weldon is notable for introducing the Weldon Amendment, a federal law that prevents taxpayer money from going to organizations that discriminate against pro-life organizations and healthcare providers.
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“The Weldon Amendment protects pro-life pregnancy centers, churches, and pro-life organizations by prohibiting discrimination from government officials because they do not refer for abortion or provide coverage for it in their health insurance plans,” Kevin Theriot, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom told The Daily Signal. “Government officials should never target groups and individuals simply because of their pro-life beliefs.”
Weldon describes himself as a “pro-life” Republican; according to The Daily Signal, during his time in Congress, he had a 100% pro-life voting record. He also previously introduced legislation that would ban human cloning, and advocated against the removal of Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube.
In a statement from 2000, Weldon affirmed his pro-life stance and called partial-birth abortion a “barbaric procedure.”
“I believe that the most important indicator of a civilized society is how it treats its weakest and most defenseless population,” he wrote at the time. “And I cannot think of a weaker or more defenseless person than a baby in the mother’s womb. It is indeed a grim comment on western civilization when we kill humans of any age.”
“The distance between life and death for these babies is a mere three inches,” he went on. “… The value of human life has been debased in our civilization to the point where animals have protective rights where humans do not. We are knee-deep in a culture of death.”
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