Statement of Jocelyn Frye, President of the National Partnership for Women & Families WASHINGTON, D.C. – April 23, 2024 – Today, the Biden administration published a final rule to support higher pay and better work-family balance for workers by...
Censoring Science Is Never a Good Idea
The first year of the Trump administration has brought a host of threats and challenges — and recent news provides yet another example of why we must continue to resist and persist.
Earlier this week, major media outlets reported that the Trump administration is trying to ban the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from using seven words or phrases in its budget documents: fetus, science-based, evidence-based, diversity, vulnerable, transgender and entitlement. It’s shocking, and it has rightly sparked national outrage because it sounds a lot like censoring science, and that’s never a good idea.
To be clear: Letting politics dictate health policy is outrageous! This is not what the country wants.
That’s why we co-sponsored two protests this week, first at the CDC’s Washington, D.C. office on Monday, and then outside the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) building on Wednesday.
Our message was clear: We stand for freedom of speech. We stand for the integrity of science and medicine. And most especially, we stand for women’s health — and the health of the LGBTQ community!
We also wanted to show that we stand with the scientists and public health experts at the CDC who are rejecting this intrusion into their work.
In addition, the National Partnership joined Democracy Forward and other partners in filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request demanding the Trump Administration disclose the White House’s role in banning federal agencies from using these words and phrases in documents related to President Trump’s 2019 budget proposal.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time this year that HHS officials have taken unprecedented and outrageous action to advance Trump’s extreme agenda. In October, the agency changed its strategic plan by inserting new language asserting that life officially begins at conception. And Trump administration officials continue trying to block immigrant women being held in government-funded shelters from accessing abortion care.
This is all part of a relentless crusade to attack women’s access to health care and to control our bodies. We’re going to keep fighting back, and you can, too.
Sign this petition today telling the Trump administration to stop trying to censor science and undermine women’s health!