New FDA nominee has a ‘pro-life heart,’ top advocate for life says

Marjorie Dannenfelser, head of a major pro-life advocacy group, said President Donald Trump’s new nominee for U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner, Dr. Heidi Overton, is “the right person for the job.”

“Iʼm very impressed with her credentials and her pro-life heart,” Dannenfelser said in an Aug. 26 interview with “EWTN Pro-Life Weekly” anchor Abigail Galván. “She, behind the scenes, was working very hard to make sure that the FDA was moving in the right direction on a new study to base further action on.”

The position became vacant after Dr. Marty Makary was fired and is currently filled by acting commissioner Kyle Diamantas, whom Dannenfelser also described as “a very strong pro-life person.”

“We’ve been extremely disappointed from the beginning of the administration with the direction of the FDA and the inaction from the Department of Justice, or the undermining of the pro-life priorities at the Department of Justice,” Dannenfelser said. “What I think is that her naming is an indication of the right direction that … this administration is now taking.”

Confirmation hearings will begin as soon as the Senate is back in session. Dannenfelser said she anticipates the hearings “will probably go pretty well.”

“Now, it doesnʼt mean that the hard questions shouldnʼt be asked,” she said. “They must be asked, and one of those questions would be the direction of the study: How long it will take? What do you see about preliminary findings come out that the court has ordered to be communicated in early October? And do you support the Department of Justice doing what it can to settle this case and get the drugs immediately out of the mail?”

“Because there is a challenge from the state of Louisiana, representing many states, that are saying what we all know: They have basically nullified those state laws,” she continued. “Theyʼve put a burden on states to help women that should never have been in a horrible situation. So while itʼs a question about the Department of Justice, one should not claim that the FDA is the only entity that can do something about fixing this horrific problem that is occurring for children and women in this nation.”

Dannenfelser called for a return to the first Trump administration policy on abortion drugs.

“Weʼve been battling for quite some time from the beginning of this administration to get these drugs out of the mail, and all weʼre hoping for, and what all any sane voter wants to see, is that on the at least on the Republican side, that we return to the first Trump administration policy on the distribution of these drugs, that only in a Biden administration that put on an emergency cloak around the distribution around the COVID moment,” she said.

“Itʼs time to restore the first Trump administration rules — no reason why we shouldnʼt,” she said. “The DOJ can act now and should.”