Bush Selects Latino Woman as Next Surgeon General : Health: Dr. Antonia Novello is a pediatrician and AIDS expert. She shares the President’s anti-abortion views.

President Bush announced Wednesday that he will nominate Dr. Antonia Novello, a pediatrician and expert on AIDS in children, to be surgeon general.

If confirmed by the Senate, she would be the first woman and the first Latino to hold the post.

Novello would succeed C. Everett Koop, the outspoken pediatric surgeon who stepped down in September after seven years as the nation’s chief public health officer.

Presidential Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said Novello supports Bush’s anti-abortion views, a stance he said was necessary for her to get the job.

“We don’t hire people that don’t support our policies. That is a hard and fast rule,” Fitzwater said.

He amended that to say that the loyalty “rule” applied only to policy-making officials from the assistant Cabinet secretary rank and up and did not apply to judicial nominees.

The abortion issue has been a controversy in a number of Administration health appointments. Fitzwater conceded that nominees for policy-making posts have been screened on this issue, but he denied that it constituted a “litmus test,” as critics have charged.

“Anybody who comes into a policy-making position is asked if they can support our policy,” Fitzwater said.

Novello’s nomination had been widely reported in advance of Wednesday’s announcement.

Novello, 45, a native of Puerto Rico, is deputy director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, one of the National Institutes of Health. She is also coordinator for AIDS research.

She was graduated from the University of Puerto Rico and, in 1970, from the university’s medical school, in the top 5% of her class.

She is married to Dr. Joe Novello, a child psychiatrist who was host of a talk show on a Washington radio station offering advice for troubled adolescents. Her brother-in-law is Don Novello, the comedian better known as “Father Guido Sarducci.”

Novello has served on several government task forces studying AIDS and on committees that dealt with women’s health issues. She is also a clinical professor of pediatrics at Georgetown University.

The surgeon general oversees the Public Health Service, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Louis W. Sullivan, the HHS secretary, praised Novello as “the ideal candidate for the job.”

He said she has been “directly involved in some of the most pressing public health issues.” He said also that her work with children who have AIDS “has put her in the forefront of leadership in issues of both research and care for people with AIDS.”

Novello was one of a number of women recommended for the job by Bush’s personal physician, Dr. Burton J. Lee III, who said he withdrew himself from consideration for the job because of his pro-choice views on abortion.

Bush opposes abortion except to protect the life of the mother or in cases of rape or incest, and he opposes federal funding of abortions for poor women for any reason other than saving the mother’s life.