David Hager is a prominent Kentucky ob-gyn who became popular in conservative circles for his books on how women need to be lead by men. He was appointed to the FDA’s advisory panel and was instrumental in blocking over the counter emergency contraception, despite a 23-4 approval of the panel. His former wife, Linda Carruth Davis, has now spoken out about his treatment of her in their thirty-two year marriage.
According to Davis, Hager’s public moralizing on sexual matters clashed with his deplorable treatment of her during their marriage. Davis alleges that between 1995 and their divorce in 2002, Hager repeatedly sodomized her without her consent. Several sources on and off the record confirmed that she had told them it was the sexual and emotional abuse within their marriage that eventually forced her out. “I probably wouldn’t have objected so much, or felt it was so abusive if he had just wanted normal [vaginal] sex all the time,” she explained to me. “But it was the painful, invasive, totally nonconsensual nature of the [anal] sex that was so horrible.”
The Lexington Herald-Leader is reporting that Hager expects to no longer be on the FDA’s panel.
