The Fine Print of “Pro-Family”

Trump Declared Himself the Father of Fertility, and Somehow That Wasn’t the Worst Part

There is a kind of Washington spectacle that should come with a complimentary airsickness bag, and the Trump Maternal Healthcare event was one of them. It was sold as a grand celebration of mothers, babies, families, fertility, rural health, child care, and every other soft-focus word you can embroider on a throw pillow before the policy details start leaking through the seams.

Trump declared himself the “father of fertility,” which is a sentence that should have caused every woman in the room to stare silently into the middle distance until the Secret Service got nervous. Instead, Senator Katie Britt all but pulled out a lighter and swayed in the front row like Donald Trump was closing the encore with “Free Bird.” She praised him for stepping in on IVF, creating a “comprehensive culture of life,” and making moms the “heartbeat” of the country, while the whole performance unfolded like a fan club meeting with federal letterhead.

It was, in a word, devotional, typical of someone suffering from Trump Devotional Syndrome. It was especially so, because Britt is not just a senator performing gratitude for the boss. She is a mother; she knows, or should know, that supporting mothers is not the same thing as using motherhood as decorative bunting for a political agenda that excludes huge numbers of actual women raising actual children under actual pressure.

The central contradiction is simple. They talked about “mothers” as if they meant all mothers, but the policies tell a much narrower story. This agenda supports the right kind of mother, in the right kind of family, using the right kind of care, making the right kind of reproductive choices, preferably with an employer, a husband, a tax liability, and a deep appreciation for being sent to a government website.

The fertility announcement is a perfect example. The administration is proposing a new category of “limited excepted benefits” so employers can voluntarily offer fertility benefits outside regular health insurance, much like dental or vision coverage. That may help some workers whose employers choose to offer it, but it’s not universal IVF coverage, it’s not a guarantee, and it does very little for the woman working part-time, freelancing, uninsured, underinsured, or employed by a company that decides fertility benefits are not its problem. The proposed rule itself says these fertility benefits would be excepted from many of the federal requirements that apply to regular health coverage.

Then there is TrumpRx, which was presented as if the heavens had opened and affordable medicine floated down on a golden escalator. Yes, the White House has announced discounts on some fertility drugs, including Cetrotide and Ovidrel, and those discounts may matter for some people paying cash. But KFF points out the catch that somehow did not make it into the pom-pom routine: TrumpRx coupons are generally for self-pay customers, they do not count toward insurance deductibles or out-of-pocket maximums, and the advertised “savings” are based on list prices that often do not reflect what insured consumers actually pay.

So, when they say this is for “moms,” what they often mean is this may help a subset of people trying to become parents, under certain employment and payment conditions, if the right employer participates, if the right medication is included, and if the discount beats whatever their insurance would have done. Which reads less like a social safety net, and more like a coupon book wearing a tiny flag pin.

Moms.gov is another beautiful piece of branding wrapped around a much thinner reality. HHS says the site features pregnancy centers, Federally Qualified Health Centers, nutritional guidance, Trump Accounts, and other resources for new and expecting parents. Fine, information can be useful. But a website isn’t paid leave, it’s not affordable childcare, it’s not postpartum care, and it is not a safe ride to a rural hospital three counties away.

A website can tell you where the resources are, assuming they exist, assuming you qualify, assuming the clinic is open, assuming you have transportation, assuming you can get off work, assuming the baby doesn’t need something right now while the government congratulates itself for having “invented” tabs.

The childcare section was where the Heritage Foundation’s fingerprints were easiest to see. Project 2025 says families made up of a married mother, father, and children are the foundation of a healthy society, and it calls for replacing policies it claims subsidize single motherhood or penalize marriage. Heritage’s newer family report calls for making the value of paid childcare benefits available for at-home parental child raising, which sounds neutral until you notice how neatly it pushes policy away from universal care and toward a particular family model.

Which is why the “choice” language is so slippery. The administration says it’s restoring parental choice by rolling back Biden-era childcare rules, including rules on paying providers based on enrollment and paying in advance. But for many families, “choice” without funding is just vibes. You can “choose” a faith-based provider that has no openings, “choose” a relative who can’t afford to quit work, “choose” to stay home when rent is due, or “choose” a childcare center that costs more than your paycheck. Congratulations, Mom, you have options in the same way a person on a sinking ship has waterfront views.

And then there is Planned Parenthood, the little policy detail that tells the truth about the whole production. The 2025 budget reconciliation law blocked Medicaid payments for one year to certain reproductive health providers that provide abortion care, and KFF reports that the ban includes all services at those entities, including contraceptive care, preventive care, and other services, not just abortion. It affects Planned Parenthood affiliates and other providers across 39 states.

That isn’t supporting all mothers. That’s not even supporting all women who might become mothers. That’s taking health care away from low-income patients and then standing in front of a Moms.gov logo to announce how much you cherish women.

The rural health money is real, and it may help if states use it well. CMS announced $50 billion for the Rural Health Transformation Program, with first-year awards to all 50 states for rural facilities, workforce, technology, and access to care. But even there, the motherhood branding outruns the facts. Rural health money is not automatically maternal health care, and maternal health care is not solved by saying “telehealth” three times into a microphone while women are still driving hours for OB care.

The Trump Accounts and family tax changes have the same problem. They make for lovely talking points, especially if the goal is to tell young parents that the government is giving their baby a head start in life. But Urban Institute found that the child-related tax changes in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” including Trump Accounts and child tax changes, primarily benefit middle- and high-income families. That means the family with the least breathing room may once again get the smallest cushion, while the people onstage applaud themselves for loving babies.

This is the difference between a pro-mother policy and a pro-birth press conference. A pro-mother policy would care about the mother who miscarries and needs emergency care. It would care about the mother who needs contraception because another pregnancy would wreck her health or her household. It would care about the mother who works nights, the mother who is single, the mother who is poor, the mother who uses Medicaid, the mother who doesn’t want to be married, the mother who can’t find childcare, and the mother who is already drowning while politicians serenade the fetus.

What we saw instead was a pageant of selective compassion. They adore mothers as symbols, but they get much pickier when mothers become people. They love the pregnant woman as long as she’s on the correct ideological path, love the stay-at-home mother as long as she fits their family postcard, love IVF when it polls well and when they can rename the discount counter after Trump, and they love babies so much that they will open a savings account for one, then make sure the mother can’t necessarily get preventive reproductive care from the clinic she already trusts.

And Katie Britt stood there beaming through it all, praising him with the misty-eyed devotion of someone who had just caught a sweaty scarf from Elvis at the International Hotel. It would’ve been embarrassing from anyone, but from a mother it was harder to stomach, because she knows the difference between motherhood as a lived condition and motherhood as a campaign prop.

Mothers don’t need another website named after them. Mothers need child care, paid leave, safe pregnancies, affordable housing, reproductive autonomy, and enough money to keep everyone fed without turning life into an obstacle course designed by a committee of Heritage interns.

The performance was loud, sentimental, and sticky with praise. The policy underneath was much colder. It didn’t say, “We support mothers.” It said, “We support mothers as long as they arrive pre-approved by our ideology, and everyone else can take a number at Moms.gov.”