Anti-Abortion Lawyer Pushed Out of F.D.A. After Republican Senator’s Pressure Campaign

Since 2019, Hilary Perkins had proudly served as a career lawyer for the government. She took seriously a basic tenet of the job, which is to argue the position of the administration, no matter the political stripes of the boss you serve. A Christian conservative hired under President Trump, she went on to defend the availability of the abortion pill under President Biden.

But last week, three days after becoming chief counsel of the Food and Drug Administration, Ms. Perkins abruptly resigned, forced out by a pressure campaign instigated by Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri. “It turns out this Biden lawyer has argued FOR Biden’s outrageous pro-abortion rules in *many* cases,” he wrote on social media.

He omitted that Ms. Perkins worked on the opposite side of a case his wife, Erin Hawley, took to the Supreme Court over access to the pill, mifepristone. He also did not mention that, in at least one other instance, Ms. Perkins had worked to keep limits on the drug’s availability.

The episode underscored the continuing purge of civil servant attorneys across the government, claiming, in this instance, a conservative casualty. Her ouster, current and former Justice Department lawyers said, is a troubling indication of how the ejections of government attorneys, at a time when the administration is engaged in dozens of high-stakes legal battles, is weakening the department.

“Senator Hawley’s accusations against me are false,” Ms. Perkins told The New York Times. “I am not who he says I am. I am a Christian who is both conservative and pro-life and who simply followed my oath as a Department of Justice career attorney. He should be fighting for me, not against me.”

Asked for comment, a spokeswoman for the senator referred to his previous social media posts. A representative for Ms. Hawley did not immediately comment.