Home / Full timeline / Louis Wade Sullivan, president of the Morehouse School of Medicine, is confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) by the U.S. Senate months after controversy about his stance on abortion.
Louis Wade Sullivan, president of the Morehouse School of Medicine, is confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) by the U.S. Senate months after controversy about his stance on abortion.
1989 (Mar 10)
Louis Wade Sullivan, president of the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, was confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) by the U.S. Senate. The confirmation came more than two months after President George Bush had nominated Sullivan for the position. Sullivan's nomination first ran into trouble on December 18, 1988, after the Black physician told an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter that while opposing federal funding for abortions, he supported a woman's right to have one. This view was incompatible with the president's outright opposition to abortion except in cases of rape or incest, or to save the pregnant woman's life. The same position had been taken by several Republican senators and other leaders of the president's party. On December 21, 1988, Sullivan had begun to back away from his pro-choice position. In a letter to the editors of the Atlanta Constitution, he wrote that he was opposed to abortion, except in cases of rape, incest, and where the life of the mother is threatened: "I am opposed to federal funding for abortions, except when the life of the mother is endangered. My position is entirely consistent with President-elect [George] Bush's position." Still, some pro-life activists were skeptical. While Sullivan attempted to convince influential Republican senators in Washington of his correct position on the abortion question, President Bush announced on January 25, 1989, that Sullivan would carry out his abortion policies if confirmed by the senate. On February 22, Sullivan confessed to the Senate Finance Committee that he had “misspoke" earlier when he said he supported a woman's right to an abortion. Sullivan's confirmation occurred the following month. Sullivan was born on November 3, 1933, in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of Walter and Lubirda Elizabeth Priester Wade Sullivan. He graduated magna cum laude from Morehouse College in 1954 and earned a doctor of medicine degree (cum laude), from the Boston University Medical School. A respected hematologist, Sullivan taught at the Harvard Medical School (1963-64), the New Jersey College of Medicine (1964-66), and the Boston University Medical School before he was named dean of the new Morehouse School of Medicine in 1974. The next year, he became both dean and president of this institution. During his fifteen-year tenure at Morehouse, the school emerged from being a two-year institution housed in two trailers, to a fully accredited, four-year institution comprised of three buildings.
References:
- • Hornsby, Alton. Chronology of African-American History: Significant Events and People from 1619 to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.