In 2000, when the first abortion pill reached America’s shores (from France), I was a young staff attorney at a reproductive rights legal organization, and my father asked me if that win meant I would move on to a “real lawyer” job. But today’s confirmation hearing for Dr. Heidi Overton as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration is a challenge to my father and everyone else who has ever assumed the battle for abortion access was over or winding down. Overton previously worked at the ultraconservative America First Policy Institute, where she called abortion “corrosive” for women and chastised the FDA for allowing mifepristone to be prescribed by telemedicine.
Her nomination, more than a quarter-century after my father thought the fight was over, is proof that Republicans are still working to turn back the clock and that the Trump administration is willing to cede leadership of the federal government’s public health infrastructure to anti-abortion extremists. The FDA determines regulations on all medications, including mifepristone, which is used in more than 60% of all U.S. abortions, and there is no reason to think that Overton will make decisions based on the science and not politics.
Her nomination is proof that the Trump administration is willing to cede leadership of the federal government’s public health infrastructure to anti-abortion extremists
And it’s not just abortion. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, questioned Overton’s commitment to standing up for science and children’s health after she supported President Donald Trump’s “nonsensical” vaccine executive order and said her involvement in that executive order alone was “almost disqualifying.”
It is disqualifying. Overton’s support of Trump’s vaccine executive order and her opposition to mifepristone are both reasons the Senate committee should vote against her nomination.
I want to be precise about what’s at stake, because misinformation has muddied the waters. Approved over 25 years ago, in a highly politicized process, mifepristone still carries Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies, or REMS, restrictions normally reserved for high-risk drugs like opioids or specialty cancer medications. No other drug this safe carries REMS. For example, the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra has never been subject to REMS despite a significantly higher risk of death.
A quarter-century of real-world use has produced a mountain of reliable scientific data supporting mifepristone’s safety. But the REMS restrictions were never about protecting women’s health or advancing science. Today mifepristone’s safety is crystal clear, while the politics have become more muddied than ever. Rhetoric about “protecting” women’s health becomes the language used to control them.
The latest attacks on women’s decisions whether, when and with whom to have a child fit into the broader conservative glorification of traditional times that never were. The effort to roll back our rights reaches back past the 1990’s homophobic family values rhetoric, beyond the 1950’s whitewashed “Leave It to Beaver” mythology, and all the way to the Victorian chastity era. When anti-abortion forces, including Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, salivate to revive and misapply the outdated 1873 Comstock Law, an anti-obscenity measure, to ban abortion, they are telling us exactly how far backward they are prepared to drag us.
I keep thinking about the great Gloria Steinem, who died this month. Her advocacy for feminism was built on recognizing that control over our bodies and reproductive decision making is key to gender equality. She frequently repeated the poignant saying: “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be sacrament.” Steinem was also forthright about the important role abortion had played in her early life and dedicated one of her many books to the doctor in London who provided her such care in 1957.
Putting presidential politics ahead of science and safety is a red flag. Restrictions on contraception and hormone therapy may not be far behind.
This ongoing fight for women’s rights isn’t just about one pill. Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices in his first term who were instrumental to overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022. Now his administration continues to attack reproductive healthcare access by nominating an abortion pill skeptic to lead the FDA. Telemedicine abortion has dramatically expanded access to care after Roe was overturned, and opponents are determined to reverse that pro-choice progress.
If mifepristone can be reopened for review under an FDA led by someone whose views on the medication ignore the agency’s own scientific determinations, then it is a warning about what comes next. Putting presidential politics ahead of science and safety is a red flag. Restrictions on contraception and hormone therapy may not be far behind.
Eight states have telemedicine abortion shield laws that allow licensed clinicians to serve patients nationwide. These laws that my organization, Reproductive Futures, has helped build and strengthen are no longer just a backstop. They are the front line.
Abortion-friendly states that have not yet passed telemedicine shield law protections need to move forward quickly. The old assumption that federal regulators will hold the line on settled science is long gone.
Steinem insisted that women’s control over our own bodies wasn’t a favor that anyone could grant or revoke. This principle is being tested with the confirmation hearing of Overton and whether the FDA will stand by its own scientific determinations or bend to the Trump administration’s agenda. This fight doesn’t end with Overton’s confirmation hearing. It moves now to every ballot box where reproductive freedom is at stake. It moves to every attorney general, governor and state and federal legislator who will support and defend our rights, not horse trade them away for proximity to the White House. And it moves to the shield laws we have built to ensure that when the federal government refuses to recognize reproductive freedom, the states will step up.
The time is now to protect the abortion pill and preserve the freedom that women have fought for and won over generations.
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