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national women's law center
Report Warns of Anti-Family Pronatalist Movement's Growing Influence on Trump White House
"Underneath shiny motherhood medals and promises of baby bonuses is a movement intent on elevating white supremacist ideology and forcing women out of the workplace," said one advocate.
Aug 13, 2025
The Trump administration's push for Americans to have more children has been well documented, from Vice President JD Vance's insults aimed at "childless cat ladies" to officials' meetings with "pronatalist" advocates who want to boost U.S. birth rates, which have been declining since 2007.
But a report released by the National Women's Law Center (NWLC) on Wednesday details how the methods the White House have reportedly considered to convince Americans to procreate moremay be described by the far right as "pro-family," but are actually being pushed by a eugenicist, misogynist movement that has little interest in making it any easier to raise a family in the United States.
The proposals include bestowing a "National Medal of Motherhood" on women who have more than six children, giving a $5,000 "baby bonus" to new parents, and prioritizing federal projects in areas with high birth rates.
"Underneath shiny motherhood medals and promises of baby bonuses is a movement intent on elevating white supremacist ideology and forcing women out of the workplace," said Emily Martin, chief program officer of the National Women's Law Center.
The report describes how "Silicon Valley tech elites" and traditional conservatives who oppose abortion rights and even a woman's right to work outside the home have converged to push for "preserving the traditional family structure while encouraging women to have a lot of children."
With pronatalists often referring to "declining genetic quality" in the U.S. and promoting the idea that Americans must produce "good quality children," in the words of evolutionary psychologist Diana Fleischman, the pronatalist movement "is built on racist, sexist, and anti-immigrant ideologies."
If conservatives are concerned about population loss in the U.S., the report points out, they would "make it easier for immigrants to come to the United States to live and work. More immigrants mean more workers, which would address some of the economic concerns raised by declining birth rates."
But pronatalists "only want to see certain populations increase (i.e., white people), and there are many immigrants who don't fit into that narrow qualification."
The report, titled "Baby Bonuses and Motherhood Medals: Why We Shouldn't Trust the Pronatalist Movement," describes how President Donald Trump has enlisted a "pronatalist army" that's been instrumental both in pushing a virulently anti-immigrant, mass deportation agenda and in demanding that more straight couples should marry and have children, as the right-wing policy playbook Project 2025 demands.
Trump's former adviser and benefactor, billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk, has spoken frequently about the need to prevent a collapse of U.S. society and civilization by raising birth rates, and has pushed misinformation fearmongering about birth control.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy proposed rewarding areas with high birth rates by prioritizing infrastructure projects, and like Vance has lobbed insults at single women while also deriding the use of contraception.
The report was released days after CNN detailed the close ties the Trump administration has with self-described Christian nationalist pastor Doug Wilson, who heads the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, preaches that women should not vote, and suggested in an interview with correspondent Pamela Brown that women's primary function is birthing children, saying they are "the kind of people that people come out of."
Wilson has ties to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose children attend schools founded by the pastor and who shared the video online with the tagline of Wilson's church, "All of Christ for All of Life."
But the NWLC noted, no amount of haranguing women over their relationship status, plans for childbearing, or insistence that they are primarily meant to stay at home with "four or five children," as Wilson said, can reverse the impact the Trump administration's policies have had on families.
"While the Trump administration claims to be pursuing a pro-baby agenda, their actions tell a different story," the report notes. "Rather than advancing policies that would actually support families—like lowering costs, expanding access to housing and food, or investing in child care—they've prioritized dismantling basic need supports, rolling back longstanding civil rights protections, and ripping away people's bodily autonomy."
The report was published weeks after Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law—making pregnancy more expensive and more dangerous for millions of low-income women by slashing Medicaid funding and "endangering the 42 million women and children" who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for their daily meals.
While demanding that women have more children, said the NWLC, Trump has pushed an "anti-women, anti-family agenda."
Martin said that unlike the pronatalist movement, "a real pro-family agenda would include protecting reproductive healthcare, investing in childcare as a public good, promoting workplace policies that enable parents to succeed, and ensuring that all children have the resources that they need to thrive not just at birth, but throughout their lives."
"The administration's deep hostility toward these pro-family policies," said Martin, "tells you all that you need to know about pronatalists' true motives.”
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'Unconscionable': Trump Admin Blasted for Plan to Ban Abortions at VA Hospitals
"Those who fight for all our freedom must have the most basic freedom to control their own bodies and futures—and this rule robs them of it," said the head of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Aug 04, 2025
Advocates for veterans, reproductive rights campaigners, and Democrats in Congress on Monday continued to lambaste the Trump administration's quiet move to end abortion care for former U.S. service members and their relatives.
"Since taking office, the Trump administration has repeatedly attacked service members, veterans, and their families' access to basic reproductive care, including gender-affirming care," said Planned Parenthood Federation of America president and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson in a Monday statement.
Planned Parenthood and its leader have frequently criticized actions by President Donald Trump, including his signature on Republicans' recently passed budget reconciliation package that targets the group's clinics—which provide a range of healthcare services—by cutting them off from Medicaid funds if they continue to offer abortions.
"Those who fight for all our freedom must have the most basic freedom to control their own bodies and futures—and this rule robs them of it. Taking away access to healthcare shows us that the Trump administration will always put politics and retribution over people's lives," McGill Johnson said of the new proposal for veterans' care. "Planned Parenthood will never stop fighting to ensure everyone has access to the full spectrum of sexual and reproductive healthcare—no matter what."
The Trump Administration just moved to BAN abortion care for VETERANS, even in instances of rape and incest.This is just another attack on our veterans and reproductive health care.We owe it to our servicemembers to provide them the care they need.
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— Rep. Ted Lieu (@reptedlieu.bsky.social) August 4, 2025 at 1:06 PM
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade, the Biden administration allowed the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide abortion counseling and care for service members and beneficiaries in cases of rape, incest, or if the pregnancy threatened the health of the patient. On Friday, the VA proposed a rule that would "reinstate the full exclusion on abortions and abortion counseling from the medical benefits package," and the Civilian Health and Medical Program.
The document says the VA would continue treating ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages, and would allow abortion care "when a physician certifies that the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term."
The proposal quickly drew rebuke from a range of critics, including U.S. lawmakers. Blasting the proposed rule as "disgusting and dangerous," Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said on social media Friday that the government "should not be able to impose a pregnancy on anyone—least of all survivors of rape, abuse, or those whose health is at risk."
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who had advocated for the Biden administration's policy, declared Saturday that "Republicans don't care if your health is in danger, if you're a veteran, or if you've been raped—they want abortion outlawed everywhere, for everyone."
As the 30-day public comment period for the proposed rule began Monday, U.S. House Veterans' Affairs Committee Ranking Member Mark Takano (D-Calif.) warned that "stripping away access to essential reproductive healthcare at VA, the largest integrated healthcare network in the United States, puts veterans' lives at risk and violates the promise we made to them. Veterans have earned the right to healthcare. Full stop. This ban on reproductive healthcare will harm veterans and is dangerous."
The proposal makes clear that VA Secretary Doug Collins "is substituting his judgment for that of the hundreds of thousands of women veterans who have earned the freedom to make personal medical decisions in consultation with their providers," Takano said in a statement. "It also gags medical providers and does not allow them to provide complete and honest care to veterans who get their care from VA. Rolling back this rule is a direct attack on veterans' rights. It will jeopardize the lives of pregnant veterans across our country, especially those residing in states with total abortion bans and other reproductive healthcare restrictions, which have already led to preventable deaths."
Reproductive rights advocates have similarly weighed in over the past few days and highlighted the anti-choice state laws enacted since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision reversed Roe.
Katie O'Connor, senior director of federal abortion policy at the National Women's Law Center, said that "at a time when extremist lawmakers are passing cruel abortion bans and restrictions, this move only deepens the crisis those laws have created—stripping veterans of their reproductive freedom and creating even more confusion about where they can turn for care."
"Veterans already face unique challenges to their health and well-being, including experiencing PTSD, recovering from military sexual trauma, and facing an increased risk of suicide," she noted, referring to post-traumatic stress disorder. "Banning access to the full range of reproductive services, including abortion, further jeopardizes their health and safety. No one should have to travel hundreds of miles, endure financial hardship, or risk their health just to get the medical care they need. Our veterans deserve better."
Center for Reproductive Rights president and CEO Nancy Northup declared that "this administration is sending a clear message to veterans—that their health and dignity aren't worth defending. To devalue veterans in this way and take away life-changing healthcare would be unconscionable. This shows you just how extreme this administration's anti-abortion stance is—they would rather a veteran suffer severely than receive an abortion."
Dr. Raegan McDonald-Mosley, a practicing OB-GYN and CEO of Power to Decide, also warned that the new "needlessly cruel policy change," if it goes through as expected, will harm veterans and "once again betrays our nation's commitment to them."
"Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, 12 states have enacted total abortion bans, one additional state has no abortion clinics, and seven states have gestational restrictions often in effect so early that people don't even know they are pregnant," she explained. "All of this exacerbates an ongoing public health crisis. For some veterans, VA was the only place they were able to obtain abortion care in these states."
"Restrictions on abortion coverage—the effects of which fall hardest on people who already face unequal access to healthcare, including Black women, people of color, and people with low incomes—hinder a person's reproductive well-bring and deepen inequities," the doctor added. "Power to Decide condemns this policy and urges Congress to pass legislation to ensure all veterans have access to the abortion care they need when and where they need it."
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Senate Dems Block 'Deliberately Misleading' GOP Bill Attacking Reproductive Care
"This bill is the very definition of pernicious: It attacks women's healthcare using false narratives and outright fearmongering," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Jan 22, 2025
U.S. Senate Democrats on Wednesday blocked from a final vote a Republican bill that, according to Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, made clear that under newly sworn-in President Donald Trump, "it will be a golden age, but for the extreme, anti-choice movement."
"This bill is the very definition of pernicious: It attacks women's healthcare using false narratives and outright fearmongering, and adds more legal risk for doctors on something that is already illegal," Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the chamber's floor before senators voted 52-47 along party lines, short of the 60 votes needed to advance the so-called Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act (S. 6) to a final vote.
Introduced by Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), S. 6 would "prohibit a healthcare practitioner from failing to exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion," under the threat of fines and up to five years in prison. Healthcare professionals and rights advocates have condemned the legislation as deeply misleading.
"So much of the hard-right's anti-choice agenda is pushed, frankly, by people who have little to no understanding of what women go through when they are pregnant," said Schumer. "The scenario targeted by this bill is one of the most heartbreaking moments that a woman could ever encounter, the agonizing choice of having to end care when serious and rare complications arise in pregnancy. And at that moment of agony, this bill cruelly substitutes the judgment of qualified medical professionals, and the wishes of millions of families, and allows ultraright ideology to dictate what they do."
After honoring Cecile Richards, a longtime Planned Parenthood leader who died earlier this week, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said Wednesday that "of all the bills that we could be voting on—lowering the cost of healthcare, expanding childcare, helping our families—it's an absolute disgrace that Republicans are spending their first week in power attacking women, criminalizing doctors, and lying about abortion."
"This isn't how abortion works; Republicans know it," stressed Murray, a senior member and former chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. "All babies are already protected under the law, regardless of the circumstance of their birth. Doctors already have a legal obligation to provide appropriate medical care. And we already know this sham bill from Republicans is not going anywhere."
"Last time we voted down this bill, I actually spoke about something Republicans refuse to acknowledge in this debate: the struggles, the struggles of a pregnant woman, who has received tragic news that her baby had a fatal medical condition and would not be able to survive, and who were able to make the choice that was right for their family," she noted. "But now, here we are, already hearing stories of women who were denied that choice by extreme Republican abortion bans."
Wednesday's vote fell on the 52nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that affirmed abortion rights nationwide—until it was reversed by right-wing justices in 2022, with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, which provoked a fresh wave of state-level restrictions on reproductive freedom.
"It's no accident that congressional Republicans used the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a watershed case for liberty, equality, and bodily autonomy, to vote on a bill that perpetuates myths about abortion care, shames the people who seek that care, and vilifies those who provide it," said Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women's Law Center, in a statement.
"A majority of the electorate continues to support abortion rights and access," she noted. "Americans have seen the results of the Supreme Court's unjust and callous decision to overturn Roe v. Wade—from abortion bans forcing people to travel across state lines to access the care they need to pregnant people being denied care and even dying to an exodus of doctors that is exacerbating the existing maternal health crisis we face—and they reject restrictive abortion policies. That's why anti-abortion advocates must rely on disinformation like this bill to further their extreme agenda."
Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, also highlighted the country's sweeping healthcare crisis in her Wednesday statement about Republicans' failed bill.
"This bill is deliberately misleading and offensive to pregnant people, and the doctors and nurses who provide their care," she said. "At a time when we are facing a national abortion access crisis, lawmakers should be focused on how to bring more care to the communities they serve, not spending their time spreading misinformation, criminalizing doctors, and inserting themselves further into medical decisions made by healthcare professionals."
"This bill is not based in any reality of how medical care works," she added, "and it's wrong, irresponsible, and dangerous to suggest otherwise."
As the GOP works to restrict reproductive rights, advocacy groups are determined to fight back. All* Above All marked the Roe anniversary by releasing an Abortion Justice Playbook that the organization's president, Nourbese Flint, said "is our blueprint for a future where abortion access is equitable, universal, and free from discrimination."
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