The HHS's appointment was greeted with outrage by anti-abortion groups. | John Shinkle/POLITICO HHS hires from Planned Parenthood

If the Obama administration was already on bad terms with abortion opponents, it’s not going to improve relations by hiring Planned Parenthood’s former spokesman for a job at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Tait Sye, Planned Parenthood’s former media director, has joined HHS as deputy assistant secretary for public affairs, HHS made public Friday. He’ll have the public health portfolio — an area where you can be pretty sure abortion and contraception issues will come up.


( Also on POLITICO: HHS spells out contraception options)

Sye, who led the family planning organization’s press shop for four and a half years, left the organization last week to move to HHS. He will have responsibility for communications involving the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As Planned Parenthood’s spokesman, Sye was involved in the organization’s defense of HHS's rule requiring that contraception be covered by most employers’ insurance policies.

Sye’s appointment was greeted with outrage by anti-abortion groups that have lobbied aggressively to cut off federal dollars to his former employer.

“Personnel is policy... This is one more example of how intertwined the Obama administration is with the abortion industry and Planned Parenthood,” Americans United for Life President Charmaine Yoest said in an email. “The Obama administration and HHS have demonstrated their unrelenting bias in favor of the abortion industry throughout the healthcare debate and in the way in which the law is being developed.”

Saying that Sye’s appointment comes against the backdrop of nine states voting to cut off funding to his former employer, the Family Research Council’s Jeanne Monahan remarked, “As the rest of the country is moving away from funding Planned Parenthood... it is a sad reflection upon Obama’s priorities that he continues to make these kinds of personnel decisions.”

HHS declined to comment on Sye’s appointment.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 2:33 p.m. on April 20, 2012.