Charmaine Yoest

Life and career

Yoest was born to Gilbert L. Crouse Sr., a government economist, and Janice Shaw Crouse, a speechwriter for President George H. W. Bush and policy analyst at conservative Christian activist group Concerned Women for America. Yoest attended Taylor University in 1982 and 1983, during which time her mother was Taylor's Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs. She then transferred to and graduated from Wheaton College, earning a bachelor's degree in politics in 1986. After graduating college, Yoest went to work in Washington D.C. as a Confidential Assistant in the Office of Presidential Personnel in the White House during the administration of President Ronald Reagan. Since 1990 she has been married to John Wesley "Jack" Yoest, Jr., a former official in the Department of Health and Human Services and an entrepreneur and academic; they have five children. In 1996 Deborah Shaw Lewis and Yoest co-authored Mother in the Middle, an examination of United States childcare policy.

Yoest earned a Ph.D. in politics at University of Virginia in 2004, writing a dissertation on the politics of parental leave. She has received fellowships from several foundations, including Mellon, Olin, Bradley, and Kohler. She also worked as a policy analyst at the Family Research Council from 2005 to 2008, eventually rising to Vice President.

In 2008 she was a senior adviser to Mike Huckabee's 2008 presidential campaign. Yoest was called to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee during the July 2009 confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor, whom Yoest unsuccessfully opposed. In 2009, Yoest was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent six months of chemotherapy. On July 1, 2010, Yoest testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee at the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee (and Solicitor General) Elena Kagan. Yoest also opposed Kagan's nomination and called for a Senate investigation into alleged discrepancies in Kagan's testimony related to partial-birth abortion. In 2012, Yoest was appointed to the Congressional Award Board by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.

Yoest was president and CEO of Americans United for Life for several years. In 2016, she joined Gary Bauer's group American Values as a senior fellow.

Position on abortion and birth control

A 2011 profile in The Christian Science Monitor said Yoest "is not shrill, rigid, or somehow provincial in values or experience. She is not a fire-and-brimstone finger wagger, though faith is a centerpiece of her life." A 2012 profile in The Washington Post discussed Yoest's role in the initial decision by Susan G. Komen for the Cure to stop giving funds to Planned Parenthood.

A 2012 New York Times profile said Yoest's opposition to legal abortion "leaves no room for exceptions in the case of rape or incest or to preserve the health of the mother. She believes that embryos have legal rights and opposes birth control, like the IUD, that she thinks 'has life-ending properties.'" Yoest has vigorously affirmed the unproven abortion–breast cancer hypothesis, which posits that having an abortion increases the risk of breast cancer. Yoest, former head of the antiabortion advocacy group Americans United for Life, helped to develop the strategy for a Texas statute filled with obstacles to abortion services, in the guise of protections for women’s health. The U.S. Supreme Court abandoned its deference to state law and struck down the law because its underlying factual claims were patently false. Donald Trump appointed Yoest as assistant secretary for public affairs at HHS. She asserts that condoms do not protect against HIV or other sexually transmitted infections. Yoest has claimed contraception does not reduce the number of abortions and says that to accept this argument “would be, frankly, carrying water for the other side to allow them to redefine the issue in that way.