On Mother’s Day, the Trump administration launched moms.gov, a new website that purports to provide “resources, information, and help for new and expecting mothers.” The second line of text reveals that the site is specifically geared toward those facing “difficult or unexpected pregnancies”—in other words, the people who might want to have abortions.
Keep scrolling and you’ll find a telling image: A stock photo of a headless, white pregnant woman, standing in what appears to be a wheat field. Animated baby footprints walk up the sides of the image, pink on the left, blue on the right.
Below this faceless avatar of the “good” American mother appears the first category of resources: “pregnancy support services and health centers.” The first item listed, before any type of actual healthcare facility, is “pregnancy centers.” Specifically, anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs). Depending on whether you view the site on desktop or mobile, this category appears to the left of or above federally qualified health centers—legitimate medical clinics, which provide health services regardless of patients’ ability to pay.
“Pregnancy centers provide supportive services for mothers and families,” moms.gov reads. “Many centers offer pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, STD/STI testing and treatment, parenting support, childbirth classes, medical referrals, and material goods like clothes and diapers—at no cost to you. There are more than 2,750 pregnancy centers across the country. The majority of pregnancy centers offer limited medical services. Check with your local center for details.”
Despite the choice to use the vague term “pregnancy centers,” it’s clear the federal government intends to refer people to anti-abortion centers, because the site’s “find pregnancy centers near you” link leads users to Option Line, a 24/7 referral service run by the major Catholic anti-abortion organization Heartbeat International.
The vast majority of CPCs are religiously affiliated, and their primarily purpose is to mislead and delay people seeking abortions. They often pose as legitimate abortion clinics, going so far as to mimic their branding and open up shop next door or across the street. Some even have their volunteers stand outside abortion clinics to divert patients. They increasingly advertise limited medical services; however, these services are typically of low quality or provided in a way that flies in the face of public health guidance. For example, a 2025 study found that 28 percent of CPCs advertised testing for at least one sexually transmitted infection, but only about 17 percent offered treatment. This runs contrary to guidelines issued by virtually every major medical organization, which emphasize fast and effective treatment to reduce further STI transmission.
Ultrasounds are the most commonly advertised medical service at CPCs, with more than 70 percent of centers offering them. Even people who know CPCs are ideologically motivated sometimes visit in the hopes of obtaining a free ultrasound. What these patients don’t know is that the ultrasounds are almost always nondiagnostic, meaning they have no medical value and may be conducted and read by volunteers without appropriate training. Not only does this mean the patient will likely have to pay for a diagnostic ultrasound elsewhere, it can also be dangerous. For example, a Massachusetts woman sued a CPC after it failed to diagnose her ectopic pregnancy, which resulted in her losing a fallopian tube. In Kentucky, a nurse became a whistleblower after she discovered a CPC where she had planned to volunteer failed to properly sterilize equipment including transvaginal ultrasound probes.
Even anti-abortion physicians acknowledge the quality of medical services at CPCs is poor, per recordings Autonomy News obtained from an industry conference. The centers also propagate harmful medical disinformation, such as the false claims that medication abortion can be “reversed,” and that condoms do not prevent STI transmission.
To the extent that CPCs provide help for people wanting to continue pregnancies—like diapers, formula, and baby clothes—that help is conditional. Clients typically have to “earn” it, gaining “baby bucks” or “mommy money” to spend on supplies by doing things like attending church services, Bible study, or ideologically biased classes.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time the federal government has pointed people toward anti-abortion centers. In 2023, I reported on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s refusal to remove CPCs from its directories of STI testing and treatment centers, despite the fact that services at CPCs aren’t delivered in accordance with the federal government’s own guidelines. And that was under the Biden administration.
CPCs also receive hundreds of millions in federal funding each year, a longstanding fact. During the first Trump administration, at least one CPC chain even received Title X family planning funds.
What’s different about this is that the federal government is now doing, on a larger scale, exactly what abortion-hostile states have done for more than a decade: Purporting to offer pregnancy information and resources, while directing people to CPCs. In fact, “informed consent” laws in many states require abortion providers to give patients state-mandated “counseling” and information packets prior to their abortions. These “resources” often includeHeartbeat’s Option Line, or its Abortion Pill Rescue Network hotline.
Moms.gov also features three links to adoption information, all from anti-abortion organizations. One of them is Focus on the Family, a far-right evangelical organization designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of Trump’s enemies du jour. It also includes a guide to “conscience protections,” enumerating the many situations in which—according to this administration’s interpretation—federal law protects parents who want to refuse medical treatments for themselves or their children, or protects providers who want to refuse treatment to pregnant patients.
Finally, in a “preconception health” section, the website references fertility awareness-based methods, or FABMs, approaches that can be used to either prevent pregnancy or aid conception by tracking menstrual cycles and monitoring physical signs of ovulation. These methods can be useful, and people interested in them often feel dismissed or judged by medical providers. This pushes them right into the arms of Christian and MAHA “wellness” influencers alike, who often dramatically overstate how effective and easy these methods are to use. The Trump administration has already shown interest in a related concept, “restorative reproductive medicine,” as a supposed alternative to assisted reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilization.
It’s not inherently bad for the federal government to provide information about FABMs—especially because, if it were accurate, that information would acknowledge the wide gap between “perfect” and “typical” use with many of these methods. However, it is alarming to see the administration promote both CPCs and FABMs over other options at a time when it has systematically attacked access to high-quality reproductive health services. It’s done so through moves such as “defunding” Planned Parenthood and other large abortion providers; freezing Title X funds and then proposing the elimination of the program; and enacting overall cuts to Medicaid that will result in millions losing health coverage.
In remarks from the Oval Office on Monday, Trump joked—or was it a joke?—that he’d like the site better if the title had his name in it. But his name is all over moms.gov, which advertises Trump Accounts and TrumpRx. TV doctor and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Mehmet Oz made the bizarre statement that “one in three Americans are under-babied,” confirming that moms.gov is just the latest step toward this administration’s pronatalist and eugenicist goal of producing more white babies.
Trump is proposing further cuts to the one federal program dedicated to feeding moms and babies. But hey, at least now they have, in Oz’s words, a “beautiful” website.
This story was edited and fact-checked by Susan Rinkunas.
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