Pro-Birth Is Not Pro-Baby

The White House promoted childbirth while cutting the programs and supports that actually help mothers survive pregnancy and help children thrive afterward.

On Monday, the White House hosted an event on the heels of Mother’s Day. The event had some truly bizarre moments, as President Trump gathered mothers, federal officials, and cameras in the Oval Office for what the Administration billed as a celebration of maternal health and family support.

Among other things, they lamented that the birth rate is failing, with Dr. Mehmet Oz, who is Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), arguing that one-in-three mothers are “under-babied.”

Later, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stepped up to the mic to blame declining birth rates on low “sperm counts” in “teenagers today” (as if the solution is for teenage boys to be having more babies) and the “toxic soup” in which “our young women are walking around.”

RFK Jr. added that the President directed HHS to study this “fertility crisis,” which is a very different priority from the decreased research that HHS is conducting to find cures for diseases like cancer and conditions that cause maternal and infant mortality.

Not to be outdone, President Trump reminded everybody that he became “the father of fertility” after he received a three-to-four-minute tutorial from Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) about In vitro fertilization (IVF).

He also urged cuts to payment rates for care and treatment for autism. This could be devastating to the providers and create huge challenges for families seeking services for kids with autism.

And to finish things off, he urged action by HHS on “natural 7-OH,” which is a potent opioid compound found in kratom leaves. Not sure why you would talk about or even mention something like that at an event about moms and babies, but there it was.

Public health officials in Hawaii have some thoughts on this topic.

Beyond the cringe-worthy comments by these three male administration officials, the White House event also focused on celebrating the dismantling of the very systems that support mothers and their children.

Dr. Oz argued that cutting Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion in the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB) “saved Medicaid.” It doesn’t.

Instead, these cuts threaten coverage for both pregnant women and children, as Medicaid covers 41% of the births in this country. There is already evidence that millions of people, including children, have lost Medicaid coverage since the passage of the bill.

Furthermore, at the event on mothers and babies, the White House brought in a fourth guy, Assistant Secretary for Family Support at HHS Alex J. Adams to announce a child care deregulation proposal that eliminates protections and safety standards for child care. Mothers were not clamoring for the end to standards that ensure the quality and safety of child care for their kids.

The Contradictions Are Not New

The gap between some of the pronatalist rhetoric on display and genuinely pro-mother, pro-child policy is vast.. The loudest voices demanding more births are often the same voices cutting the programs that make raising children possible: Medicaid, SNAP, child care, a meaningful Child Tax Credit, and affordable housing.

Although Vice President Vance was not in attendance, it cannot be forgotten that he cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate for OBBB – a bill that included nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts and Trump Accounts that children cannot touch for 18 years — long after diapers, car seats, and pediatric care are needed.

The White House also touted the Child Tax Credit (CTC) as a signature achievement for families. According to its webpage, the Administration “delivered the largest tax cuts in history for working families, including permanently expanding the Child Tax Credit….”

However, the Child Tax Credit in OBBB imposes what has been called “baby and child penalties.” When mothers lose income during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postnatal period, that drop often pushes earnings below the phase-in threshold of the CTC. Consequently, the family’s newborn — and potentially all their children — lose part or all of the credit.

You cannot call a policy “pro-family” when it punishes families for having a baby.

What They Could Have Proposed, and Chose Not To

The administration had choices. Real ones. For every piece of this pronatalist performance, there was a proven alternative sitting right there, unproposed and unacknowledged.

The Child Tax Credit baby penalty. The OBBBA’s Child Tax Credit still excludes millions of the lowest-income children, including newborns whose mothers lose income during pregnancy and childbirth, and blocks 2.6 million U.S. citizen children from receiving anything at all because their caregiver lacks a Social Security number. This is not an oversight. It is a policy choice. Instead of a penalty, the fix — either full refundability for young children or even a “baby bonus” – could have been proposed. Instead, they applauded the OBBB provision.

A newborn tax credit. In the same week of the White House’s maternal health event, Reps. David Valadao (R-CA), Tom Suozzi (D-NY), Blake Moore (R-UT), and Debbie Dingell (D-MI) introduced the bipartisan Supporting Newborn Parents Act of 2026, which would create a newborn tax credit, separate from the existing Child Tax Credit, to help new families cover the significant costs associated with welcoming a child. This is exactly the kind of pro-baby, pro-mom policy that the White House could have championed or supported. But it didn’t.

Healthy Start. Established in 1991 under President George H.W. Bush, the Healthy Start program builds community-based initiatives to reduce infant and maternal mortality in high-risk areas. President Trump’s proposed FY 2026 budget would have eliminated it entirely, and the program’s authorization has expired.. A bipartisan reauthorization bill — H.R. 3302, the Healthy Start Reauthorization Act of 2025, introduced by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) — is sitting in Congress awaiting a vote. It was not mentioned at the Oval Office event.

Make CHIP permanent. The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) covers millions of children, yet it remains the only major federal insurance program that is temporary — requiring repeated reauthorization and creating financial uncertainty for millions of families and states that depend on it. The Children’s Health Insurance Program Permanency (CHIPP) Act (H.R. 1901), introduced by Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-CA), would make CHIP permanent and give states greater flexibility to tailor their programs to local needs. A White House event celebrating maternal and child health would have been the perfect occasion to champion permanency for the program that covers millions of pregnant women and children, including newborns. Again, it was ignored.

Pass the Momnibus. The Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act — a comprehensive package of bills addressing the full landscape of the maternal health crisis — covers everything from social determinants of health to extending WIC eligibility for postpartum mothers, growing and diversifying the perinatal workforce, improving maternal health data collection, and funding community-based organizations working to reduce disparities. It passed the House in the last Congress and stalled in the Senate. An administration serious about maternal health could push for its reintroduction and passage now. Yet, it was not mentioned.

Fund the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant. Title V of the Social Security Act — the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant — is the foundation of the public health system serving mothers, children, and families across every state. It funds prenatal care, newborn screening, home visiting, and services for children with special health care needs. Basically, flat funding over multiple appropriations cycles has meant real-dollar cuts as costs rise. An administration holding an Oval Office event on maternal health could have committed to meaningful increases in MCH Block Grant funding. It did not.

Rescind the retroactive Medicaid coverage cut for pregnant women. Under current law before OBBB, eligible individuals could have medical expenses from up to 90 days before their Medicaid application paid by the program. OBBB cut that window to 60 days for most enrollees, including pregnant women. This means mothers who seek prenatal care before getting enrolled in Medicaid can now be left with unpaid bills from that critical early window. Congress should rescind this provision and restore the 90-day retroactive coverage policy.

Paid family leave. The United States remains the only wealthy nation without a national paid family leave policy. One in four private-sector employees has access to paid leave. Hispanic and Black workers are much less likely to have access than their white counterparts. The FAMILY Act (H.R. 5390/S. 2823), led by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) in the 119th Congress, would establish a permanent program. Paid leave was ignored by event’s participants entirely.

Home visiting. Home visiting programs connect children and families to health, social, and educational services and have been shown to improve maternal and infant health, reduce hospitalizations, and strengthen school readiness. Only a fraction of eligible families with babies are currently receiving home visiting services. Either a commitment to increase funding for home visiting directly or requiring Medicaid to cover home visiting services — a recommendation in the Children’s Agenda for the 119th Congress — would dramatically expand access for the families and babies who need it most. Not mentioned.

Expand child care affordability, quality, and safety. Adams, who highlighted the child care deregulation proposal on Monday, has declared he wants federal child care regulations to “fit on an index card in my back pocket” and has moved to loosen or eliminate the rules that limit how many children a single adult can supervise. As child and family policy expert Elliot Haspel documents in Jacobin, Adams applied this same deregulatory logic as Idaho’s health secretary — where a child named Logan died in an out-of-ratio program, and his uncle testified that the proposed elimination of ratio requirements may have prevented his death.

Rather than improving child care access, quality, and safety, the Administration has proposed repealing the Biden-era reforms that stabilized child care provider payments and helped families access quality care. Only one-in-six children eligible for child care assistance currently receive it. Rather than improving child care access, quality, and safety, the Administration is making a broken system worse through its agenda of “organized abandonment” of children and families.

(Here are First Focus on Children’s comments on the proposed child care rule changes.)

Rx Kids. In Michigan, the Rx Kids program — founded by Dr. Mona Hanna and Luke Shaefer — provides $1,500 to pregnant mothers and $500 monthly for up to a year after birth. Research shows it is associated with increased prenatal care use, improved economic stability, decreased postpartum depression, and reductions in child abuse. Dr. Hanna has said, “Poverty is a pathogen. It makes kids sick.” Piloting or scaling Rx Kids nationally would be exactly the kind of investment a pro-baby administration would make. It was not mentioned.

These are at least 11 things the Administration could have announced to help women and children at the press event, but nope.

Instead, the Administration Is Actively Harming Newborns

There is a difference between failing to support babies and actively putting them at risk. Unfortunately, this Administration has done both.

Consider birthright citizenship. The attack on the constitutional guarantee that every child born on American soil is a citizen is, at its core, an attack on babies. As I have written previously, the policy would render some babies born in this country stateless from their first breath — denied the protections, benefits, and belonging that citizenship confers.

A movement that claims to celebrate birth cannot simultaneously seek to strip the legal identity of babies at birth based on the nationality of their parents.

In the President’s budget proposal, they also proposed $200 million in cuts to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), putting the health and food security of millions of low-income families at risk. This is the exact opposite of being pro-mom and pro-baby.

And then there is the vitamin K shot — one of the simplest, most effective interventions in the history of newborn medicine. Since the early 1960s, a single injection of vitamin K given within hours of birth has nearly eliminated vitamin K deficiency bleeding, a condition that causes catastrophic internal bleeding, including in the brain. It worked so well that most people forgot it existed.

Now babies are dying from it again.

At a recent House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing, Rep. Kim Schrier (D-WA), also a pediatrician, pressed RFK Jr. to simply tell pregnant women that the vitamin K shot is safe. He refused, saying he had “never said, literally never said, anything about it.”

Schrier’s response was precise: “That’s exactly the point. You don’t say anything about it, but the doubt you’ve created about all of medicine and science is causing parents to make dangerous decisions.” She called it the “RFK Jr. Spillover Effect”: spread misinformation, scare and confuse parents, and children stop receiving routine care, including care that prevents them from bleeding out.

This is what “organized abandonment” looks like in public health: erode trust in medicine from the top, then hold an event celebrating the health of mothers and babies.

The Maternity Ward Is Closing

The situation on the ground for pregnant women and babies is also not good. After OBBB passed and Medicaid was slashed by nearly $1 trillion, the impact is already being felt. According to Protect Our Care, over 25 labor and delivery units have closed, with over 130 more at risk of closing.

This is happening against a backdrop where 35% of counties already lack birthing hospitals and birth centers, according to the March of Dimes.

There was already a crisis in access to maternity care, and yet, the Administration supported unprecedented Medicaid cuts.

Against that backdrop, they held an Oval Office event about how much they love moms.

Pro-Birth Is Not Pro-Baby

Sister Joan Chittister has said:

I do not believe that just because you are opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, a child educated, a child housed.

The Administration’s pronatalists express the desire to want more babies, but they are slashing the Medicaid that covers their birth, the child care that makes their parents’ work possible, and the nutrition programs that keep them fed. Their Child Tax Credit policy actually penalizes moms and babies. The attack on birthright citizenship threatens one group, babies, at the moment they take their first breath.

The Administration has raised doubts about science in ways that have caused some parents to hesitate getting a vitamin K treatment that protects babies from a preventable bleeding disorder that has been nearly eliminated for sixty years. And it does not want to propose the home visiting, the paid leave, the Momnibus, the MCH Block Grant, the permanent CHIP coverage, or the cash supports that would actually make birth less frightening and raising children less impossible.

If this Administration truly wanted more babies — and more importantly, healthier babies, raised by healthier mothers, in more stable families — it would reauthorize Healthy Start rather than proposing its elimination. It would not have signed a bill that closes maternity wards and cuts retroactive Medicaid coverage for pregnant women. It would make CHIP permanent, fund the MCH Block Grant, pass the Momnibus, and expand funding for home visiting programs. It would fix the Child Tax Credit so that it stops penalizing families for the act of having a baby. And It would protect the birthright citizenship of every baby born on American soil, invest in child care rather than deregulating it into dangerous corners, and have an HHS Secretary who can bring himself to tell parents that a shot preventing babies from bleeding out is safe.

Instead, on Monday, they launched a website, talked about the “under-babied,” teenage sperm counts, the gutting of child care standards and protections, and approval of natural 7-OH.

Wanting more births is not the same as valuing babies.