May is Women’s Health Month. And the Trump Administration has been all over it. And by all over it I mean telling women to have more babies and denying that this country’s alarmingly high maternal mortality rate for Black women is a thing. Has there ever been an administration so hostile to women AND so incompetent at the same time?
Feeling good, ladies? Feeling healthy? Feeling liberated?
To close out Women’s Health Month, here is a sampling of things that the Trump Administration has done to women (as opposed to, you know, for women):
Gave women a website instead of paid child care and maternal leave
Trump held an event in the Oval Office on Mother’s Day to discuss maternal health and to announce Moms.gov. The website purports to address “the needs of mothers and fathers who face difficult or unexpected pregnancies” and ensure “the well-being of mothers and the health of American families.” Now, if I were looking for pregnancy and family planning information, I sure as hell wouldn’t turn to a list curated by an administration that brags about overturning Roe v Wade. But if what you’re looking for is a list of “crisis pregnancy centers,” places that counsel against abortion, you’re in luck because that’s the first resource offered. Right below it is nutrition information urging pregnant women to eat “diverse nutrient-dense foods.” What people who can’t afford such food or if live in a food desert should do is not addressed. Nor are the other things that are truly necessary to actually take care of “the health of American families” like paid parental leave, paid sick time, and universal health care.
Shamed Women for Not Having More Babies
At that same Mother’s Day meeting, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Dr. Mehmet Oz bemoaned “the reality that one in three Americans are under-babied,” referring to people who either don’t have kids or don’t have as many kids as the administration thinks they should have. Right-wing conservatives are obsessed with the birth rate, in case you didn’t know, specifically the birth of white babies. In his remarks, Oz focused on rural areas where there's a high maternal mortality rate and claimed that tens of billions of dollars is being spent on “incredibly beneficial advances to help Americans living in rural America have babies safely” (nevermind that Trump’s Medicaid cuts are doing exactly the opposite, putting many rural hospitals in danger of closing). There was no mention of the high Black maternal mortality rate in the U.S.
Claimed that Addressing Black Maternal Mortality is Racist Against White People
In an exchange with Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pensylvania) during Black Maternal Health Week, Rep. Lee called Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. out on his agency’s refusal to even talk about Black maternal health disparities even though Black women are at least three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women. In an effort to root out DEI, RFK’s agency “told programs to remove a list of nearly 200 words and phrases from [NIH] funding applications, including the word ‘Black,’” Lee said. “How are we going to solve the Black maternal mortality crisis if we cannot say ‘Black’?” RFK Jr.’s response was to attack DEI. “President Trump is trying to end division in this country, not sew division,” he said. “That’s what DEI did, it divided people.” He then asked Rep. Lee, “Do you think the federal government should be paying for DEI?” She responded, “I think the federal government has a vested interest in ensuring that its citizens survive childbirth.” This is not an area where reasonable people can agree to disagree.
Gutted Cancer Research Funding
Speaking surviving, one would think that the federal government ensuring that its citizens don’t die of cancer would be part of that whole “ensuring the well-being of mothers and the health of American families” thing. But no. In an MSNBC opinion piece, Jenny Bitner details her harrowing experience with cancer and attributes her survival to researchers who “spent years in a lab making connections that made survival possible and had the federal government funding their tireless work.” Bitner writes, “The Trump administration has proposed cutting $6 billion from the National Institutes of Health, the country’s medical research agency, for fiscal year 2027. This is the second year in a row that the administration has put NIH funding on the chopping block. Although Congress rejected some cuts last year, the odds of winning a cancer research grant have already shifted from roughly 1 in 10 to 1 in 25. Already, NIH spending on new medical research has slowed significantly.” Surely people like Bitner will quit their bitching once the White House ballroom is completed.
Celebrated and Perpetuated the Shredding of Reproductive Rights
Since the moment the Roe v Wade decision came out conservatives were working to get it overturned. Trump appointed the Supreme Court justices who finally did it. Now a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body and her own family changes depending on what state she happens to be in, not to mention the many ways the federal government is making it harder to have an abortion. In some states a woman has the legal right to an abortion, in others she does not. In some states the threat of arrest hangs over the heads of women who miscarry and states are even passing laws to make it illegal to cross state lines to have an abortion. And the attack on abortion rights is nowhere near over. Those right-wingers obsessing over birth rates? They’re also against abortion. Probably a coincidence, right?
Cut Funding for Abortion Services and Reproductive Health Care
The Trump Administration and the Republican Party love to slash away at reproductive health care funding, from halting the delivery of condoms to help stop the spread of HIV in Africa to kneecapping Planned Parenthood clinics. Planned Parenthood, which has already closed clinics in Michigan, is in danger of having to close even more clinics unless it gets $5 million from the state. “Without urgent state action, we will soon be forced to make decisions about our health centers and our programs that cannot be undone,” Paula Thornton Greear, President and CEO Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan writes in a letter to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. “We are in this position because of the actions of the Trump administration, their allies in Congress, and anti-abortion judges.” TGP has proudly worked with Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan on campaigns to protect abortion rights and elect candidates who support reproductive freedom. The work Planned Parenthood does saves lives and the patients who use their wide array of services, including PAP smears and HIV testing, often have nowhere else to go. The continued attack on Planned Parenthood is an attack on every person who receives care there.
Look, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the health of women, especially Black women (not to mention everyone else in this country) hangs in the balance here. The man Trump put in charge of this nation’s health is literally putting us all in danger every day, from his position against vaccines to his belief that we should be guzzling raw milk.
It is time to support candidates running for office who support women. Period. Full stop. The primary election in Michigan is right around the corner and early voting starts at the end of June. Know who’s putting women’s health first by visiting Planned Parenthood Action Fund and seeing their list of endorsed candidates.