Amid upheaval at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including the firing of the agency’s director, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. distorted the facts to falsely claim that the agency’s website lists abortion as one of the “10 greatest advances in medical science.”
Kennedy’s comments came in an Aug. 28 interview on “Fox & Friends,” the day after HHS announced on X that Susan Monarez, who had served as CDC director for less than a month after being nominated by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate, was no longer head of the agency.
Monarez, who reportedly clashed with Kennedy over vaccine policy, has disputed the legality of her firing. Her lawyers said in a statement posted on X that she was targeted after she “refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts.” The same day, the Food and Drug Administration approved updated COVID-19 shots for the 2025-2026 season, but only for certain people based on age or health condition, contrary to the advice of other major medical groups. Four high-level CDC staffers also resigned.
While declining to speak about Monarez specifically, Kennedy said in the Fox News interview that the “CDC has problems,” citing what he viewed as deficiencies in the agency’s response during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As another example of the CDC’s “problems,” Kennedy, who has repeatedly claimed not to be anti-vaccine despite decades of such advocacy work, proceeded to point to an agency website that he said listed abortion, water fluoridation and vaccination as major medical advances.
“Today, on the CDC’s website right now, they list the 10 top advances — the 10 greatest advances in medical science. And one of them is abortion,” he said. “Another is fluoridation, another is vaccines. So we need to look at the priorities of the agency, if there is really a deeply, deeply embedded — I would say, malaise — at the agency.”
“The agency is in trouble and we need to fix it,” he added. “And it may be that some people should not be working there anymore.”
Later in the day, at the end of a press conference in Texas, Kennedy repeated the claim.
“The CDC has on its website — today — that among the top 10 medical innovations, greatest medical accomplishments in history, abortion. One of the greatest medical accomplishments because it keeps small families. Go to the website, look at fluoridation — giving kids a toxin — and vaccines.”
We could find no CDC webpage listing the greatest medical innovations. There are a few older reports published in the agency’s journal, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, that list the top 10 public health achievements. But while vaccination and water fluoridation are indeed included, abortion is not a main entry in any of them. Nor are the lists featured on the CDC’s website in a consumer-friendly way. The pages are web versions of published journal articles that are primarily intended for medical or scientific audiences.
HHS did not respond to our inquiry asking which list Kennedy was citing, but it’s likely that Kennedy is referring to an April 1999 MMWR that lists the 10 greatest public health achievements in the U.S. during the 20th century. (Two similar MMWR lists cover achievements in the first decade of the 21st century and include vaccination but do not ever refer to abortion.) In subsequent MMWR articles in 1999, which explain the rationale for each of the choices on the 20th century list, two of the entries, “Healthier mothers and babies” and “Family Planning,” include brief mentions of abortion. But abortion itself is not the major “achievement.”
Rather, the October 1999 “Healthier mothers and babies” MMWR is about reductions in maternal and infant mortality, which are attributed to “[e]nvironmental interventions, improvements in nutrition, advances in clinical medicine, improvements in access to health care, improvements in surveillance and monitoring of disease, increases in education levels, and improvements in standards of living.”
Abortion is mentioned with regard to maternal mortality and sepsis, a potentially lethal immune response to an infection. Noting that maternal mortality was highest in the last century during the first three decades of the 1900s, the MMWR explains that poor obstetric practices were responsible for many preventable maternal deaths.
“Deliveries, including some surgical interventions, were performed without following the principles of asepsis,” the article reads. “As a result, 40% of maternal deaths were caused by sepsis (half following delivery and half associated with illegally induced abortion).”
The MMWR goes on to explain that increased attention to the issue of maternal mortality starting in the 1930s led to maternal mortality review committees as well as new practice guidelines. In addition, more people began delivering in hospitals using aseptic techniques and with access to medical advances such as antibiotics and safer blood transfusions. At the end of the paragraph, abortion is mentioned once to note that legalization of the practice “beginning in the 1960s contributed to an 89% decline in deaths from septic illegal abortions” between 1950 and 1973.
Legalization of abortion, therefore, contributed to some of the maternal mortality declines, according to the MMWR, but it was one of many factors — and did not mean abortions were not occurring previously.
The “Family planning” MMWR from December 1999 is focused on modern contraceptives, not abortion. Describing family planning as it developed over the 20th century as “the ability to achieve desired birth spacing and family size,” the article notes that “couples chose to have fewer children” and that “[s]maller families and longer birth intervals have contributed to the better health of infants, children, and women.”
Abortion is mentioned primarily in contrast to modern birth control, since contraceptives can prevent unintended pregnancies. The article is clear that the main goal is to reduce such pregnancies, which in turn would reduce abortions.
Under a section titled “Challenges,” the article states that unintended pregnancy in the U.S. “remains a problem; 49% of pregnancies are unintended and 54% of these end in abortion.” It also notes that both of those rates are higher in the U.S. than other high-income countries.
“Access to high quality contraceptive services will continue to be an important factor in promoting healthy pregnancies and preventing unintended pregnancy in this country,” the article reads.
The article does not directly promote abortion, although it is critical of “restrictive policies and laws affecting family planning” and supports providing “the full array of reproductive health-care services.” It also lists Roe v. Wade, the now-overturned 1973 Supreme Court case that established a constitutional right to abortion, as a “milestone” in family planning.
The remaining six achievements — some of which align with Kennedy’s professed goals — are improvements in motor vehicle safety; safer workplaces; control of infectious disease via clean water and sanitation; a decline in deaths from coronary heart disease and stroke; safer and healthier foods; and reductions in tobacco use after it was recognized as a health hazard.
Kennedy’s claim that the fluoride added to drinking water to improve dental health is a “toxin” is also misleading. As we’ve explained before, high amounts of fluoride in water can be harmful, but at the level recommended in the U.S., there is only weak or inconsistent data to suggest any harm. Most of the concern has focused on the possibility of fluoride reducing IQ scores in children. But associations between fluoride and lower IQ have only been consistently observed at levels above what is recommended in the U.S. Many expert groups, including the American Dental Association, continue to support water fluoridation to protect teeth from cavities.
The CDC, at least for now, also continues to support water fluoridation, calling it a safe and effective intervention that is “a cornerstone strategy for prevention of cavities in the U.S.”
The CDC refers to its top 10 public health achievements list or links to related MMWRs on a few webpages about fluoride or vaccination. We were unable to find any similar hyperlinking or citation on pages related to abortion.
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