What’s happened?

What’s happened?

The Trump administration has dismantled key parts of the public health system vital for reproductive care. Indiscriminate funding freezes, mass firings, and the termination of critical research initiatives have hampered the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) essential operations and imperiled domestic reproductive and maternal health programs.

Why does it matter?

Why does it matter?

• Need reproductive health care? The Trump administration has decimated the workforce responsible for vital initiatives that are supposed to safeguard your health.
  • HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have instituted mass layoffs across HHS public health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). An FDA employee described the cuts as a “bloodbath”; 20,000 positions were expected to be eliminated in total—roughly a quarter of the HHS workforce. 
  • Cuts include the majority of employees in the CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health. According to one former staffer, all of the team’s work was essentially “eliminated overnight” because “[t]here was no plan in place to sunset any of it, or to transfer […] expertise over to someone else or to train folks.”
    • The team tasked with compiling and publishing data focusing on abortion access—such as how many patients are getting abortions, where, and with what methods—has been eliminated, leaving 2023 numbers “sitting in inboxes and Teams folders” and stymying efforts to understand the impact of state abortion bans in the aftermath of Dobbs.
    • The Trump administration also erased contraception guidelines and pages related to HIV testing directed specifically toward LGBTQ+ people, along with entire data sets of research, from the CDC website. While some information has since been restored, the pages continue to note that the “CDC’s website is being modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders” regarding so-called “gender ideology” and diversity, equity, and inclusion.

• Need information about your rights or how to access reproductive health care? The Trump administration has erased this information.
  • Within hours of taking office, the Trump administration took down ReproductiveRights.gov, a vital resource that provided information about patient rights and how to access reproductive health care, including abortion.
  • The administration has also censored other resources about your rights, including by scrubbing the HHS website of any mention of policies that protect abortion care and by removing critical information for patients and providers about federal privacy protections related to reproductive health care.    
• Pregnant or planning to be? President Trump has shut down the federal data collection system put in place to safeguard your health.
  • Without public notice, the Trump administration has cut the entire team running the CDC’s Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), a critical public health program that has collected maternal and infant health data since 1988. The program tracked everything from rates of postpartum depression or anxiety in new parents to elevated risks of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and the impact of second-hand smoke on babies.
  • PRAMS was established to identify disparities in health outcomes, particularly among Black and Native American mothers and infants, and to guide efforts to reduce maternal and infant mortality.

• Rely on IVF to start or grow your family? President Trump has cut off vital research on assisted reproduction.
  • Within days of promising to be the “fertilization president,” President Trump fired the entire division in charge of the National Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Surveillance System that provides patients with essential information about in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other ART options, including the success rates of every fertility clinic across the country. This work helped push the medical community to adopt safer and more effective IVF methods.
  • While the President has signed an Executive Order on IVF, to date, the administration has done nothing to ensure that IVF care is actually more accessible or affordable.

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