Experts rip Trump over 'dramatic' damage done despite huge campaign pledge

President Donald Trump salutes, during the annual National Memorial Day Observance in the Memorial Amphitheater, at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, May 26, 2025. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno

President Donald Trump talked a big game during his 2024 campaign about addressing the declining birth rates, but according to experts who spoke with The Hill, his efforts have fallen flat, and in many cases, have actually done "dramatic" damage to the ability of most Americans to have children.

The declining birth rate in the U.S. has become a major topic of concern for Trump's ultra-wealthy conservative allies, most notably including Elon Musk, as well as for Vice President JD Vance. As a result, Trump went all in on promises to address the issue while seeking reelection, claiming that he would become known as "the fertilization president." In a Friday report, The Hill noted that "many of his actions since returning to office have gone toward supporting those aims," including an executive order to lower the costs for certain fertility drugs and launching a government website with pregnancy information and resources.

These efforts have been dwarfed, however, by the sweeping cuts that Trump's administration has made to healthcare services, which experts told The Hill have prevented any meaningful progress towards addressing birth rate concerns.

Sean Tipton, chief advocacy and policy officer for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, told the outlet that birth rate issues are caused by a complicated mix of major issues facing society, and said that Trump will have to do a lot more in order to begin addressing them.

“It’s clear that, like a lot of industrialized Western countries, the birth rate in the United States has been declining, right? I think a solution to that is going to require a lot more than we have seen so far,” Tipton said. “I think that it’s a big sociological problem, cultural problem, as well as a biological problem.”

Anthony Wright, executive director for Families USA, told the outlet that Trump's biggest agenda success in his second term has done massive damage to the programs most responsible for helping Americans handle pregnancy and childbirth.

“The rhetoric of honoring mothers and giving birth is hard to square with the reality of the massive cuts to Medicaid and healthcare and caregiving in general,” Wright said. “The biggest thing this administration has done is the Big Beautiful Bill with over $900 billions of cuts to Medicaid. Medicaid is literally the primary payer for pregnancy and birth in this country. It covers over 40 percent of births and pregnancy care in this country and so cutting that program by nearly a trillion dollars has a dramatic effect.”

When reached for a response to the criticisms by The Hill, a White House spokesperson claimed without evidence that Medicaid had no impact on pregnancies and called Wright "an idiot."

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