Top red flags

Top red flags

• Promoted the tenets of “blame-and-shame fertility.”
• Supported the first Trump administration’s regressive policy on Title X.
• Sowed distrust in medication abortion via telehealth despite robust evidence showing it is safe and effective.

Statements and policy actions

Statements and policy actions 

• Saphier has made multiple statements about contraception and fertility on her podcast and in media appearances, including when she:
  • Stated that “far too many young girls are started on birth control.”
  • Claimed that the health risks of hormonal birth control have been ignored by the medical community to further the “mainstream agenda.”
  • Said that doctors and parents have a “knee jerk reflex” to put young people on hormonal birth control without adequate consideration.
  • Blamed hormonal birth control and antidepressant use for society’s “metabolic issues and infertility issues.”
• Saphier made comments on her podcast promoting early-life childbearing, saying that women were “created to have babies when we are younger.”
  • These comments reflect pronatalism as well as “blame-and-shame fertility”, an anti-reproductive freedom doctrine that assumes infertility is the person’s fault—based on their diet, lifestyle, age, etc.
• Saphier expressed “concerns” about the FDA’s decision to remove the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone, claiming the decision would harm patients, despite robust evidence showing that medication abortion via telehealth is safe and effective.
• Saphier called a Hawaii bill, which required health care providers to display information about comprehensive reproductive health services, “an egregious infraction on religious freedom.”
• Saphier promoted the first Trump administration’s regressive policy on Title X, which prevented grantees from providing critical reproductive health care information and services, multiple times on Fox News.
  • In response to the rule change, she said, “people oppose using federal funds for abortions.” This statement falsely implies that Title X provided federal funding for abortions, which has never been true.
• Saphier has expressed skepticism over vaccines, stating that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics should be “less stringent” with vaccine schedules. She later defended many of the Trump administration’s controversial changes to the vaccine schedule.
  • In reality, overwhelming scientific evidence concludes that vaccines are safe and effective. Anti-vaccine rhetoric, like anti-abortion rhetoric, erodes trust in proven science and the patient-provider relationship.
  • Vaccines have been increasingly politicized under the leadership of HHS Secretary RFK, Jr., often using anti-rights justifications. For example, NIH reinstated a ban on the use of fetal tissue in vaccine development research; an anti-abortion advocate was appointed to CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices; and politicized changes to the recommended vaccine schedule made it harder for pregnant people to access the Covid vaccine.
• Saphier said transgender youth represent a “national emergency” and questioned whether gender identity was a “fad.” She also opposed research on gender-affirming care.

Publications

Publications 

• Wrote an op-ed that conflates abortion care with eugenics, claims newly proposed abortion rights legislation allows “termination of a pregnancy through birth,” and asks, “Where is the role of personal accountability for the actions of those who become pregnant?”

Extremist connections

Extremist connections

• Saphier hosted the President of the Heritage Foundation, the anti-abortion conservative organization that created Project 2025, on her podcast to discuss “what the government should do” about decreasing birth and marriage rates in the U.S. During the podcast discussion, she championed a Heritage Foundation report promoting “blame-and-shame fertility.”
• Anti-abortion groups celebrated Saphier’s nomination for Surgeon General.
  • Life News specifically referred to her as a “pro-life advocate.”