Dr. Heidi Overton

Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Department of Health and Human Services
Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

As FDA Commissioner, Dr. Overton would lead the agency’s scientific activities, communications, policy and planning, and general operations. Significantly, the FDA regulates medication abortion, contraception, fertility drugs, labor and delivery medications, and treatment for sexually-transmitted infections, among other reproductive health drugs and products. The FDA Commissioner is also ultimately responsible for determining any changes to the restrictive Risk Mitigation and Evaluation (REMS) or label approval for mifepristone, one of the drugs in the two-drug regimen for medication abortion, and which is the subject of ongoing litigation.

Dr. Heidi Overton was nominated for FDA Commissioner on August 19, 2026, after serving as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy since January 2025.

Officially Nominated Headshot photo of Heidi Overton.

Tell your Senators vote NO on Overton.

Top red flags

Called for onerous restrictions on medication abortion and claimed that medication abortion is “dangerous to women” despite decades of robust evidence showing it is safe and effective.
Advocated for the politicization of government agencies, calling out the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for not funding studies that confirm her views on abortion and gender-affirming care. She argued that “all of those agencies need to be reformed.”
Celebrated the overturning of Roe v. Wade, calling it a “huge victory,” advocated for even more erosion of reproductive rights, and referred to the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), legislation to enshrine abortion rights nationwide, as an example of “radicalism” and “extremism.”

Statements and policy actions

In response to Roe v Wade being overturned, Overton said, “today the Supreme Court delivered a huge victory for life.”
Overton advocated for the politicization of government agencies, calling out the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for not funding studies that confirm her views on abortion and gender-affirming care. She noted “all of those agencies need to be reformed.”
- She went on to sow distrust in the scientific process, claiming there is a “coordinated effort from the top” that shapes research and medical progress and called on her movement to “infiltrate” research.
While Overton served as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, she promoted the administration’s narrow IVF policies, which claim to focus on the “root causes of infertility” like “obesity, metabolic health” but do not require employers to provide IVF insurance coverage. The policies promote tenets of “blame-and-shame fertility,” an anti-reproductive freedom doctrine that assumes infertility is the person’s fault—based on their diet, lifestyle, age, etc.
Overton was one of the key strategists on the administration’s controversial changes to the childhood 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.

Publications

Overton has written extensively on her anti-abortion stance in her role as the Chief Policy Officer at the America First Policy Institute including:
- An issue brief that calls abortion “dangerous” and “corrosive.” The brief opposes the FDA’s decision to remove the in-person dispensing requirements on mifepristone and pushes false information about the safety of medication abortion despite decades of research proving that mifepristone is extraordinarily safe and effective.
- A policy memo, co-authored by Pastor Paula White-Cain, Senior Advisor of White House Faith Office, which referred to the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), legislation to enshrine abortion rights nationwide, as an example of “radicalism” and “extremism” while falsely claiming that the bill would authorize “practices that are indistinguishable from infanticide.”
- An op-ed in which she advocated against the right to abortion and called on Americans to “reject abortion radicalism.”
Overton authored a Newsweek article in which she repeated false and inflammatory statements about abortions later in pregnancy, using phrases like “abortion up until the moment of birth.”
Overton co-authored a Townhall article advocating for the defunding of Planned Parenthood and redirecting those funds to groups that do not provide the full spectrum of reproductive health care.

Extremist connections

Anti-abortion groups celebrated Overton’s nomination for FDA Commissioner.
Overton served as the Chief Policy Officer and Director of the Center for a Healthy America at the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), an organization that works to “honor the sanctity of every innocent human life” and eliminate all federal funding for abortion providers. Overton is listed as one of the organization’s experts on “sanctity of life.”
At the 2025 “March for Life,” the President of the organization thanked Overton for her work on the “pro-life policy agenda” at the White House.
Overton is a close collaborator of Paula White-Cain, who is vehemently anti-abortion.