Running the federal family planning programs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is not exactly a high-profile position. But the agency oversees the department’s massive reproductive-health program, including HHS’ Office of Population Affairs, which funds birth control, pregnancy tests, counseling and screenings for sexually transmitted diseases and HIV. As Slate’s Amanda Schaffer explains, the head of this office has “extensive power to shape the kinds of information disseminated to millions of women,” and has the authority to “develop new guidelines for clinics, set priorities, and determine how scarce dollars get spent.”

That’s precisely why Orr, formerly a professor at TV preacher Pat Robertson’s college in Virginia, is an inexplicable choice. In a previous job, she urged health insurance plans for federal employees to stop covering birth control, because, as she put it, “Fertility is not a disease.” Even more striking, Orr published an article in 2000 referring to contraceptives as being part of a “culture of death.”