WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — A lawyer who defended abortion and vaccine mandates will no longer be the top legal representative for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the Trump administration following public scrutiny of her history, the FDA announced Thursday.
On Tuesday, Axios reported the selection of Hilary Perkins for FDA chief counsel, and that she was the choice of Dr. Marty Makary, President Donald Trump’s nominee for FDA commissioner. Makary testified before the Senate this week he would spearhead objective reviews of abortion pill and vaccine policy, commitments conservatives had little reason to doubt given his credentials as a critic of the COVID-19 establishment.
“We’ve been able to recruit higher quality personnel to HHS than in any time in its history,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said. “These are individuals who will return the agency to gold-standard science, evidence-based medicine, and recalibrate its trajectory toward public health rather than industry profiteering.”
However, the report noted that Perkins had been the Justice Department attorney who defended the Biden administration’s relaxation of rules governing the dispensation of abortion pills in court.
The next day, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said he directed his team to look deeper into the matter, and found that “this Biden lawyer has argued FOR Biden’s outrageous pro-abortion rules in many cases.”
“She also argued FOR Biden’s draconian, discredited vaccine mandates,” Hawley added.
Her brief in one case said objections to COVID-19 mandates “verge on the conspiratorial – e.g., that there is no public health emergency and that the American people have been psychologically manipulated.” The brief also stated that Biden’s orders mandating vaccination “strike a careful balance between the federal government’s compelling interest in stemming the spread of COVID-19 and certain individuals’ medical or religious reasons for declining vaccination.”
These positions are – obviously – totally out of line with President Trump
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) March 13, 2025
On Thursday morning, the FDA announced that Perkins had resigned from the position, effective immediately. It did not elaborate as to why.
While the outcome appears to demonstrate that public scrutiny and pressure can still produce results, the situation raises new questions about the views and judgment of Makary himself. The Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee voted 14-9 Thursday to advance his nomination to the Senate floor for final approval.
Trump has taken a number of pro-life actions since returning to office, but he said on the campaign trail that he would not enforce federal law prohibiting abortion pills from being dispensed by mail. Kennedy says Trump has asked him to study the dangers of abortion pills which, along with Makary’s previous testimony, has given pro-lifers hope for the possibility of a reversal.
