President Bush announced Thursday that pro-life, pro-abstinence-education Dr. Eric Keroack of Marblehead, Mass., will be the new deputy assistant secretary for Health and Human Services, The Boston Globe reported.
In his new role, Keroack will advise Secretary Michael Leavitt on issues such as adolescent pregnancy, abstinence education and family planning.
Raymond Ruddy, president of Gerard Health Foundation, said Keroack is a pioneer in the use of medical arguments to explain the devastation caused by abortion and the reasons teens should remain abstinent until marriage.
"He was one of the first doctors ever to really get involved in the medical aspect of some of these pregnancy-resource centers," he said. "For very, very little pay, he sacrificed a lot to help women do ultrasounds and do what was right in the abortion decision.
"It's pretty much what he has done all his life."
Dianne Luby, president and chief executive officer of the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, said Keroack has tried to impede women's right to abortion.
"Putting Dr. Keroack in charge of our nation's largest family-planning program," she charged, "is dangerous to women's health."
Dr. John Diggs, who collaborated with Keroack on a paper a few years ago, said Keroack's efforts to make sure abortion-minded women see an ultrasound image of their preborn child are what have pro-abortion activists irate.
Keroack wrote a letter to the Massachusetts Legislature in 2001 in support of offering ultrasound to pregnant women.
"Even Midas lets you look at your old muffler," he wrote, "before they advise you to change it."
Keroack has been an outspoken advocate for abstinence education, as well. In a letter to the American Medical Association he criticized the group for downplaying the benefits of teaching abstinence.
"Abstinence education," he said, "is the first mechanism that has actually made a positive impact on the devastation caused by the errant sexual-education programs of the 1970s and 1980s."
