4 things to know about Trump's new surgeon general pick Dr. Casey Means

4. Criticized prescribing birth control for women

In an interview with Tucker Carlson last year, Means shared her concerns about prescribing birth control to women: “These medications that are literally shutting down the hormones in the female body that create this cyclical, life-giving nature of women, we basically told women these hormones don’t matter. Your ability to create the most miracle of any miracles, which is create life, just shut it down.” 

“Having these hormonal cycles is part and parcel with our health in every possible way and also with the miracle of creating life,” she contended. “And so for years, you just lose the biofeedback of what’s happening with your cycle. It is one of the key barometers of female health. How is your cycle doing? Is it regular? Is it heavy?”

Means condemned the push to “shut it down [women's cycles and reproduction]” and the false assurance that “there is no repercussions for that [taking birth control].”

She views the promotion of contraception as part of a “disrespect of life” that ties closely with the rise of “industrial agriculture” and the “spraying of [...] pesticides.” Similarly, she condemned efforts to target “the things that give life in this world, which are women and soil,” suggesting that “we have tried to dominate and shut down the cycles.”

“By taking a hammer to women’s hormones, taking a hammer to pests, what we’ve done is we are destroying the things that give us life in this country.”

She reiterated her lament that “we are [...] turning our back on life,” and cited it as “part of the root cause of why things feel so dark right now.”