President Trump launched a website Monday for new and expectant mothers as part of the administration’s plan to reverse the nation’s declining birth rate and improve maternal and infant health.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the government’s new website, Moms.gov, will serve as “one stop shopping” for in vitro fertilization services, prenatal care, postnatal care and nutrition for baby formula.
“We have a fertility crisis in this country,” Mr. Kennedy said. “This is an existential crisis for our country.”
The Moms.gov website includes dozens of resources and a link to the president’s discounted drug site, TrumpRx, where some fertility medications can be purchased at deeply reduced costs. The site also links to the president’s Trump Accounts, which, when launched this summer, will offer tax-free investment accounts for children who will receive $1,000 from the U.S. Treasury that they can access when they turn 18 years old.
Mr. Kennedy called the new fertility benefit and website “a huge win for the MAHA movement and the pro-life movement.”
Mr. Trump, along with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz, said the administration is taking steps to help Americans have more children.
On the day after Mother’s Day, Mr. Trump announced the Department of Labor is issuing a new rule to formally create a fertility benefit option for employers that can be offered to all employees outside of their normal health insurance plans.
Mr. Trump said he was urged by Sen. Katie Britt, Alabama Republican, to take action to save IVF treatment after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled frozen embryos have the same rights as children. The decision threatened to shut down the IVF industry. Mr. Trump said he quickly pivoted to finding ways to boost IVF availability.
“She said, ‘Sir, we have to do something,’ and I’m a quick study. So I learned everything there is to learn in about three, four minutes, and I became the father of fertility,” Mr. Trump said Monday.
Mr. Trump said the new federal IVF benefit “will be a major help for millions of American moms, that will result in more beautiful American babies.”
The moms.gov website includes links to pregnancy centers and federally qualified health centers that provide services to low-income areas. The site offers information about nutrition for pregnant women and new mothers, information on preconception health and a link to a Health and Human Services website about “Understanding Fertility: The Basics.”
Ms. Britt said the goal is “making America the safest and best place to have a baby.”
According to Mr. Kennedy, the U.S. reproductive rate is below the rate needed to maintain a stable population, which is 2.1 births per woman. The current U.S. birth rate is fewer than 1.6 births per woman.
“We are approaching the cataclysmic rates that Japan and China are now experiencing that is threatening their economy,” Mr. Kennedy said. “It’s a threat not only to our economy, to our national security. It’s a threat to our Social Security Trust Fund, Medicare trust fund, and Trump has directed my agency to find out the cause of the fertility crisis.”
Mr. Kennedy said his department is studying the effects of pesticides and other toxicities that have decreased U.S. fertility rates to historically low levels.
“We had a series of presidents that were trying to discourage childbirth and motherhood in this country,” Mr. Kennedy said. “Now we have a president trying to encourage it.”
