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President Donald Trump’s pick for lead watchdog at the Health and Human Services Department is likely to have a major conflict of interest when it comes to abortion.
Thomas March Bell, a former Justice Department attorney who served in Trump’s first administration, has worked for anti-abortion Republicans for decades and boasts deep ties to anti-abortion groups like Operation Rescue.
Still, Trump nominated Bell to be the next inspector general at HHS — a historically nonpartisan role that oversees the billions of federal dollars used to run HHS programs. The inspector general ensures that all programs run efficiently and is tasked with investigating any claims of fraud or abuse.
It’s very likely Bell will be confirmed during a Wednesday morning Senate vote. Trump fired the last HHS inspector general, along with over a dozen other government watchdogs, earlier this year — sparking pushback from Senate Democrats who argued Bell’s nomination is unlawful because Trump illegally fired the previous HHS inspector general.
As HHS inspector general, Bell would be tasked with overseeing investigations into the Medicare and Medicaid programs — the latter being the largest funder of reproductive health services in the country, the Center for Reproductive Rights notes. This is particularly significant since Republicans recently floated adding more limits to how much Obamacare funds can be used for abortion services. Similar to Trump defunding Planned Parenthood via Medicaid restrictions, adding abortion restrictions to ACA tax credit usage could amount to a backdoor abortion ban for any American insured under Obamacare.
The HHS role would also make Bell responsible for investigating hospitals and verifying organizations follow all federal protocol, including the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, federal guidance that requires hospitals that participate in Medicare to offer abortion care if it’s necessary to stabilize the health of a pregnant patient while they’re experiencing a medical emergency. The Trump administration repealed some EMTALA guidance earlier this year, signaling the administration does not support abortion care even in life-saving circumstances.
Bell boasts a long list of anti-abortion advocacy. He helped create the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division while working for prominent Project 2025 author Roger Severino in the Office for Civil Rights under Trump’s first administration. The HHS division created in 2018 weaponized religious liberty to weaken and restrict access to sexual and reproductive health care.
Notably, Bell was chief counsel for a highly controversial congressional investigation into Planned Parenthood in 2015. The select panel was spearheaded by Bell and led by then-Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) to investigate allegations from anti-abortion activists that Planned Parenthood’s national network of clinics was selling fetal tissue remains. After a 15-month investigation that cost $1.6 million in taxpayer money, the panel found no evidence of wrongdoing. Still, Republicans recommended that the federal government defund Planned Parenthood. Bell reportedly later said that the goal of the investigation was to weaken the national reproductive health organization.
“Thomas Bell has made clear he wants to investigate abortion clinics and even previously recused himself from some Planned Parenthood-related issues because he’s too biased,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) told HuffPost. “Donald Trump and Republicans have been hellbent on ripping away abortion access since day one – nominating Bell is the latest in their dangerous anti-abortion agenda.”
Bell said he would not recuse himself from any abortion-related matters if confirmed to the role of inspector general, according to Bell’s written responses to members of the Senate Finance Committee, which were shared with HuffPost.
(Bell recused himself “from all enforcement matters related to his work” on the 2015 Planned Parenthood investigation before joining Trump’s first administration, an OCR spokesperson said in 2018. In a written response to Warren’s committee questions, Bell denied that he had ever fully recused himself from all matters relating to Planned Parenthood.)
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) criticized Bell and his Republican colleagues during a Senate Finance Committee hearing last month regarding Bell’s nomination. “The record shows he [Bell] spent his career running smear campaigns, including heading up a witch hunt against Planned Parenthood,” Wyden said, referring to the 2015 investigation.
In the same hearing, Bell pointed to his work in the controversial investigation as “exercising oversight over the fetal tissue industry, an industry that the Congress has banned in a federal statute.”
Bell later added that, if confirmed, he believes investigating abortion clinics is part of his job as HHS inspector general. “That’s exactly the kind of thing that the inspector general must have the courage to do – follow the law and follow the facts even if it’s unpopular,” Bell said in response to a question from Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.).
If Bell is confirmed, he joins a long list of deeply anti-abortion Trump nominations across all federal agencies, but particularly HHS. FDA Commissioner Martin Makary announced in June, with the support of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that the agency will review mifepristone despite decades of scientific evidence that shows the abortion pill is extremely safe and effective. One of Mehmet Oz’s first directives as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was to rescind Biden-era guidance supporting access to life-saving abortion care because it didn’t reflect the policy of the Trump administration.
The Senate vote to confirm Bell as HHS inspector general is scheduled for Wednesday morning.