News Briefs: The Trump Administration Is Endangering Women’s Reproductive Health
Center For American Progress
By Jill Rosenthal; Strengthening Health, Health Coverage, and Access
ARTICLE July 21, 2025
The Trump Administration’s gutting of the CDC includes slashing public health programs and eliminating 2,400 jobs, of which 460 were reinstated. The majority of CDC employees in the Division of Reproductive Health have been terminated, including cuts to the branch devoted to women’s health and fertility. Other cuts include the team that updates and disseminates contraceptive best practices to providers, and the elimination of the CDC’s Assisted Reproductive Technology Surveillance team. This comes despite Trump’s executive order to expand access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) and his self-proclaimed status as the “fertility president”. Experts have warned that these cuts will make it more dangerous to be pregnant in the United States.
The administration’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal would go further and cut the HHS budget by more than 26% compared with 2025, closing down cancer screening and prevention programs. The HHS Division of Cancer Prevention and Control’s National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program has provided more than 50 cancer registries across different states and regions to help identify cancer trends and direct resources more effectively.
Naturally, these cuts to women’s pregnancy research will have an outsized impact on women of color. As an example, the Division of Reproductive Health has been responsible for issuing contraceptive guidelines to patients with sickle cell disease, which increases the risk of serious pregnancy complications and disproportionately occurs in Black or African American people. The Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), also closed down by the administration, has tracked and measured progress on improving the health of women and infants at high risk for health problems for more than 35 years, including monitoring worse maternal health outcomes among Black women compared with white women.
In addition, the Trump administration has pursued health policy informed by misinformation, threatening access to critical pregnancy care. In a careless move, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unilaterally decided to remove COVID-19 vaccines from the CDC’s immunization recommendations for pregnant people. In doing so, he failed to consult experts, follow established protocol for vaccine recommendations, or adhere to scientific studies indicating not only that pregnancy raises the risk of severe Covid-19 but also that the vaccine is safe for pregnant people. As a result of Kennedy’s decision, the CDC’s immunization schedule no longer includes COVID-19 vaccine guidance or recommendations for pregnancy, which has implications for insurance coverage, putting pregnant people at further risk. Although providers have called for insurers to continue to cover the vaccine, some pregnant women have already reported being turned away from pharmacies when trying to get a provider-recommended COVID-19 vaccine.
1. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-trump-administration-is-endangering-women’s-reproductive-health/
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