Trump’s New Health Care Policy Staffer Thinks Birth Control Causes Abortions

Donald Trump’s transition team announced Thursday an addition to the President-elect’s White House policy team who has a history of railing against chemical birth control, claiming that it causes abortions and “deliberate miscarriages.”

Katy Talento, who will serve on Trump’s Domestic Policy Council working on healthcare policy is “an infectious disease epidemiologist with nearly 20 years of experience in public health and health policy, as well as government oversight and investigations and program evaluation,” according to the announcement by the Trump transition team. She has served the Trump campaign since July 2016 and has spent 12 years working in the Senate.

Talento’s advocacy against birth control was first surfaced when she has hired as a legislative director for Sen. Thom Tillis (R-SC). In an article she published at The Federalist in January 2015, Talento preached about the risks of birth control, some of which are founded in facts, like the risk of cardiovascular problems. But she also made bogus claims, including that birth control pills may cause miscarriages.

“Preventing a fertilized egg (i.e. after conception) from hunkering down in the wall of the uterus, where it can grow normally,” she wrote. “Progestin in birth control thins the endometrial lining (uterine wall), but a fertilized egg needs a thick, fluffy, blood-rich uterine wall to attach to and begin growth. Without it, the embryo can’t survive, and a miscarriage occurs.”

There is no link between miscarriages and taking birth control pills before a pregnancy, according to The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Talento also claimed in the article that birth control may limit a person’s ability to have children in the future.

‘Let’s say your life stage changes and you’re ready to try to have a baby,” she wrote. “You go off the Pill or the intrauterine device or whatever you’re taking. It takes a few months for the effects of the birth control to wear off and then you’re good to go, right? Wrong.”

Talento cited one study from 2012, but most other studies and experts have found no link between taking birth control and getting pregnant once going off the pill.

The top of Talento’s article asserted that “Chemical birth control causes abortions and often has terrible side effects, including deliberate miscarriage,” but she never expanded on how birth control could cause an abortion in the piece.

Talento had maintained an active Twitter presence until the Federalist article was circulated in 2015, promoting the piece on birth control as well as firing off tweets about “transgenderism” and “a black man trapped in a white body.”