After months without permanent leadership at the Food and Drug Administration, President Donald Trump tapped physician and domestic policy adviser Dr. Heidi Overton to be the agency’s next commissioner.
According to the president himself, Overton “is known to take on the HARDEST issues and bring me solutions that work best for the Country.” No less is required to take the helm of arguably the most politicized federal agency in the nation and reform not only federal regulations, but public opinion.
As a champion of “gold standard science,” Overton’s nomination has been critiqued for what the Left claims to be a subversion of the medical establishment. But this is merely a byproduct of our nation’s failure to defend objectivity in public health and medicine in decades past.
Take the approval of mifepristone under the Clinton administration. In coordination with the Population Council and Danco Laboratories, the Clinton FDA used Subpart H, an accelerated approval process of new drugs for “serious or life-threatening” illnesses, which pregnancy is not. The approval also relied on controlled clinical trials that do not reflect real-world conditions, especially following the removal of in-person dispensing requirements that were originally part of the drug’s risk evaluation and mitigation strategy.
The modification of REMS, including permitting mail-order dispensing and extending the drug’s gestational use from seven to 10 weeks, has caused increased public scrutiny, leading to former Commissioner Marty Makary’s promised review of the drug that remains ongoing. These regulatory changes were made without further clinical study and relied on incomplete, voluntarily reported data from the FDA’s Adverse Events Reporting System.
Overton has not commented publicly on the abortion pill since joining the White House Domestic Policy Council, but critiqued the agency’s handling of mifepristone regulations during her time at America First Policy Institute. Citing a Finnish study that concluded 1 in 5 women experience adverse events from chemical abortion, she argued against the removal of in-person dispensing, calling abortion “corrosive to children, women, and society broadly because it devalues and extinguishes innocent human life.”
Between the 5th Circuit’s September hearing in Louisiana v. FDA, where Louisiana is challenging the agency’s telehealth abortion regulations, and the agency’s October deadline to provide a Louisiana district court with a status update on the review, Overton will be tested on the abortion issue early.
Public opinion is on the side of reform, at least when regarding mail-order abortion pills. A recent CRC Research survey suggests 7 in 10 Americans supported restoring in-person dispensing requirements, many of whom are more likely to support restored safeguards when informed of the drug’s potential adverse events.
RFK JR. WANTED ‘GOLD STANDARD’ SCIENCE. MRNA JUST DELIVERED IT
Pro-life advocates are not looking for Overton to rubber-stamp an ideological agenda. If we are going to critique the unequal application of gold standard science by the Left, we must adhere to objectivity ourselves. Where science leads, we must follow. Hypocrisy only serves to undermine our winning cause and further damage the public trust in our federal health agencies. Ultimately, science has always led us to the conclusion that abortion, telehealth or otherwise, “extinguishes innocent human life,” as Overton has previously written.
Any FDA commissioner will have to walk the bright red line between science and the agency’s political nature. Overton is the hopeful ally of both gold standard science and women’s health, critically positioned to repair divisions within the public and further shift what regulations the public chooses to embrace.
Gavin Oxley (@RealGavinOxley) is a media and policy strategist with Americans United for Life, the nation’s leading anti-abortion legal advocacy organization.