Whopper of the Week: Moms.gov Hides Information Moms Need to Be Healthy

Whopper of the Week: 

RFK JR'S MOMS.GOV WEBSITE HIDES INFORMATION MOMS NEED TO BE HEALTHY

“Moms.gov delivers critical tools and support to help parents foster healthy pregnancies, strengthen young families, and create brighter futures for their children.” -- Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. 

SUMMARY

The Trump administration recently launched Moms.gov, a website about “the needs of mothers and fathers who face difficult or unexpected pregnancies” and “the wellbeing of mothers and the health of American families.” Unfortunately, the site is full of misinformation, omissions and deception. It aligns with the administration's pro-natalist agenda, omits information women need to thrive, and papers over MAGA/MAHA policies that undermine maternal and child health. A June 5th letter signed by 83 members of Congress finds the site “duplicitous, a waste of government resources, and a thinly-veiled attempt to push a far right agenda onto people at a vulnerable time in their lives.” As Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, the CEO of MomsRising, noted,“Moms.gov is a joke, an insult, and a danger all in one place.” 

WHY IS THIS A WHOPPER?

Kennedy's claim that Moms.gov supports healthy pregnancies collapses on inspection: the site funnels women to unregulated, anti-abortion services rather than provide truthful information women actually need. The National Women’s Law Center describes it as “a taxpayer-funded website promoting anti-abortion rhetoric, anti-science misinformation, and policies that could harm pregnant people and families.”  

Potentially harmful content includes links to anti-abortion crisis centers, including Option Line, a referral network run by the anti-abortion group Heartbeat International. “By placing unregulated pregnancy clinics (UPCs) alongside federally qualified health centers (FQHC) on a federal .gov platform, the Trump administration is creating a dangerous false equivalency,” said Mika Matsuno of Freedom Watch. “FQHCs are healthcare providers operating under rigorous federal oversight, HIPAA obligations, quality standards, and clinical accountability. UPCs generally are not.” Moms.gov also also links to biased adoption resources, including Focus on the Family, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group with a history of discrimination. 

Some of the links are a privacy nightmare. For example, Moms.gov directs users to a Heartbeat International website that collects detailed personal information, including names, addresses, marital status and menstruation dates. As Kylie Cheung and Jessica Valenti have reported, Heartbeat has shared personal medical information with corporate employees, crisis pregnancy center volunteers, and, in one case, anyone with an internet connection. Advocates are concerned that data submitted through Moms.gov could be shared with law enforcement, ICE, and others.

Moms.gov presents one-sided health information that could encourage parents to reject evidence-based medical care, such as vaccines, birth control, Tylenol and more. For example, the site only mentions vaccines in a page about the need to honor religious exemptions.

The site omits key resources that moms need to thrive. As Erin Erenberg, Chamber of Mothers CEO, points out, there is no mention of federally-protected paid leave programs, affordable and accessible childcare, or interventions that improve maternal health outcomes. “Decades of data have shown that these are the policies moms need to be well,” she notes. The site also lacks information about mental health, reproductive rights, and Affordable Care Act protections such as coverage for prenatal care, delivery, and a wide range of preventive services. Moms.gov lists ways in which work can be harmful to pregnant workers’ health, without noting that workers have a legal right to accommodations to protect their health. “We know that there is a conservative movement to push women out of the workforce and out of public life, and this website feeds into that agenda,” said Emily Martin, of the National Women’s Law Center. 

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Critics note that Moms.gov “hides a tarnished record that actually harms women and children.” MAGA and MAHA policies have cut key programs, including: Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and its Women Infant and Children program (WIC), the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Title V (the National Maternal and Child Health Block Grant), women’s health programs such as breast and cervical cancer screening programs, the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline, among others.

Kennedy and the Trump administration have also reduced access to vaccines, increasing the risk of infectious diseases such as measles, flu, COVID and hepatitis B that put pregnant women and children at risk; undermined confidence in the use of life-saving vitamin K for newborns; rolled back regulations on harmful environmental pollutants like lead, coal and PFAS (“forever chemicals”); decreased access to abortion, making pregnancy more dangerous for all women; decreased access to contraception; and gutted health research focused on maternal and child health.

Robert Shpiner, from UCLA, wrote of his 40 years in medicine, “I have seen children harmed by disease, poverty, by bad luck. I had not, until now, seen them harmed so methodically by their own government.”  

Emily Martin, of the National Women’s Law Center, sums up Moms.gov this way: “Instead of investing in universal child care, paid leave, and affordable health care, the Trump-Vance administration is spending taxpayer dollars on a pronatalist, anti-woman website littered with misinformation that could endanger women’s health and put children at risk.”   

Contributions from: Miriam Rabkin, M.D., M.P.H.,  Benedicte Callan, Ph.D.