Elon Musk, father of 14 and now Senior Advisor to the President, has been vocal about what he sees as an existential crisis: the global decline in birth rates. As he warned, unless America starts having more babies, “civilization will disappear.”
But for maternal health advocates, that message rings hollow.
Under Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), billions in funding have been cut from programs supporting maternal health care, research, and community-based initiatives. These sweeping reductions have left providers scrambling and expectant mothers without critical care.
Programs Frozen, Providers Left in the Dark
Sevonna Brown, a maternal health advocate in Brooklyn and founder of Sanctuary Medicine, was forced to halt operations nearly overnight. DOGE froze more than $2 million in federal funding tied to her initiative, causing her entire project to come to a sudden stop.
Emilie Rodriguez, co-founder of The Bridge Directory, echoed that sentiment and underscored the perceived contradiction in Musk’s message.
“We can’t claim to care about birthrates while defunding the very systems that make pregnancy, birth and parenting safe,” she told Forbes.
Layoffs Hit HHS — and Maternal Care
On April 1, thousands of employees at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were laid off. The layoffs were part of a broader policy aimed at eliminating 10,000 jobs across federal health agencies, including the CDC, FDA, and NIH — institutions central to prenatal and postpartum health.
One former staffer told Politico:
“We got completely blindsided this morning. People were already on the way to the office when they found out.”
These layoffs are part of what the Trump administration calls a plan to “streamline an inefficient bureaucracy.” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. argued the goal is to eliminate redundant programs, estimating savings of $1.8 billion annually.
Research Programs Left Hanging
The impact is already visible. Columbia University’s NY-CHAMP Center of Excellence program had planned to enroll 600 participants in its 2025 maternal health study. Due to the freeze, they were only able to fund 21 — and only after securing emergency private support.
“It’s too soon — and the sample size is too small — to tell how much of an impact the loss of funding will have on CHAMP’s studies,” Politico reported.
Cuts Without Care Could Cost More
Advocates argue these cuts are not just a blow to women — they’re a blow to the economy.
According to a study by Women’s Health Access Matters, $300 million in women’s health research across three major diseases could produce a staggering $13 billion in economic returns.
Lindsey Miltenberger, chief advocacy officer at the Society for Women’s Health Research, emphasized:
“Women’s health research is not being invested in at the level of the private sector. Making sure that is prioritized in the federal government is really important for creating that foundational research that can then be picked up by the private sector and commercialized.”
Dr. Uma Reddy, who led the NY-CHAMP study, said the interventions her team was working on likely saved the government money by preventing costly complications.
“We can address this,” Reddy told Politico. “We can improve maternal health by preventing these mental health conditions, complications … and improve families and children’s lives, and it’s cost-effective.”
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