Moms.gov revives a long tradition of state-backed pronatalism, using motherhood, misinformation and demographic panic to frame childbirth as patriotic duty—and women’s bodies as tools of the state.
This Mother’s Day, the Trump administration quietly launched Moms.gov, a new federal website aimed at “new and expecting mothers.”
At first glance, Moms.gov may look like another awkward attempt at government outreach. But the site is much more troubling, harmful and deceptive: It directs pregnant women to crisis pregnancy centers, promotes “TrumpRx” fertility medications, and warns about birth control and medications like Tylenol using language that echoes longstanding antiabortion misinformation campaigns.
Even more chilling, historians of reproductive politics may recognize an insidious pattern in its broader messaging: a growing pronatalist movement that frames motherhood less as a personal choice than as a patriotic duty tied to national identity, declining birth rates and conservative family ideals—part of a new, dangerous body fascism campaign.
The United States has seen state-backed campaigns surrounding motherhood before. And while direct comparisons to Nazi Germany require caution, historians have long documented how governments facing demographic anxiety elevate childbirth, restrict reproductive autonomy and define which families are most valuable to the nation.
At least part of the modern right’s pronatalist push stems from fears about declining birth rates—captured in recent comments from Dr. Mehmet Oz, who described Americans as “under-babied.”
Germany faced similar anxieties in the early 20th century. In a widely cited study on abortion and racial hygiene in Nazi Germany, psychologist and reproductive-health researcher Henry P. David and his coauthors describe how German officials and media figures warned that declining birth rates threatened the nation’s future after World War I.
Restricting Abortion and Birth Control
German officials in the 1920s and ’30s sought to increase birth rates through financial incentives for families, restrictions on contraception and harsh penalties for abortion.
After taking power, Hitler intensified those efforts: dissolving sex-education and physician organizations, arresting birth-control advocates and expanding laws restricting information about abortion and contraception—pushing Germany’s own version of the Comstock Act (that antiabortion justices and advocates are reaching for today).
Contraception was never fully outlawed in Nazi Germany. But officials broadened existing obscenity laws to criminalize distributing or advertising information about birth control and abortion procedures. Amendments to the German Penal Code in 1933 imposed fines and prison sentences on anyone promoting abortion services or medications.
As David and his colleagues explain, these laws were designed in part to suppress access to abortion medication and reproductive information.
German leaders and health associations, like the Berlin Council of Physicians, officially derided abortion, claiming that it would “exterminate with a strong hand.”
Hitler himself condemned contraception as “a violation of nature, a degradation of womanhood, motherhood and love.”
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in the U.S., some conservative lawmakers and antiabortion activists in the United States have expanded their focus beyond abortion, targeting emergency contraception, IUDs and medication abortion while promoting claims that hormonal birth control harms women’s long-term fertility.
In recent years, antiabortion activists, MAHA-aligned influencers and Project 2025 allies have increasingly promoted “natural” fertility tracking methods while casting hormonal birth control and abortion medication as dangerous or “unnatural.”
Moms.gov reflects this broader political shift.
TrumpRx, which is promoted on Moms.gov, advertises treatments aimed at improving fertility by addressing “hormonal imbalances,” “insulin resistance” and other reproductive-health concerns.
This language mirrors a growing ecosystem of online and political messaging that encourages women to view reproductive healthcare with suspicion while elevating childbirth and motherhood as social imperatives.
These debates are unfolding alongside renewed legal attacks on medication abortion, including efforts to restrict abortion pills by mail and telemedicine. Reproductive-rights advocates warn such policies do not simply limit abortion access—they also reinforce a broader ideological push steering women toward traditional motherhood roles and away from reproductive autonomy.
Glorifying Motherhood
Nazi officials also aggressively glorified motherhood itself. Hitler introduced the Mother’s Cross, a state-issued medal awarded to German women who bore multiple children in service of the regime’s population goals.
Trump and allies have floated similar symbolic proposals in recent months, including a “National Medal of Motherhood” for women with six or more children.
This past Mother’s Day, Trump hosted a luncheon in the White House Rose Garden celebrating mothers as the “backbone of American resilience.” The event prominently featured so-called “Angel Moms”—parents whose children were killed by undocumented immigrants—and “Gold Star Moms,” whose children died during military service.
The administration’s pronatalist messaging has also included support for proposals like a $5,000 “baby bonus” for parents after childbirth.
Nazi Germany similarly tied childbirth to state incentives. In 1933, the government introduced marriage loans for couples deemed racially and biologically “fit.” Portions of the loans were forgiven with the birth of each child.
The Nazi regime also distributed publications aimed at women that blended domestic advice, motherhood guidance and nationalist ideology.
Mutter und Kind (“Mother and Child”), published by the Reich Mothers’ Service, instructed women on maternal duties while reinforcing racial ideology and reproductive expectations.
NS-Frauen-Warte—the official Nazi women’s magazine—used stories about fashion, femininity and motherhood to promote the idea that women’s highest purpose was serving the state through childbirth and domestic labor.
Even the Nazi Ministry of Health publication championed “the duty of the healthy woman to procreate.”
The wording closely mirrored Dr. Oz’s similar demographic anxieties earlier this month: During a White House event, Oz— Trump’s administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services—warned that the United States was “way below” replacement birth rates and described many Americans as “under-babied” (meaning that “you either don’t have any children, or you have less children that you would normally want to have”).
Moms.gov reflects the same broader cultural project: using government-backed messaging to elevate childbirth and motherhood as civic responsibility.
Adoption Pressure and “Deserving” Families
Pronatalist politics have also historically shaped adoption and family policy.
The Nazi Lebensborn program, created in 1935, encouraged unmarried women considered racially “desirable” to bear children in state-run maternity homes. Although women received prenatal care and housing, the state exercised enormous control over where children would ultimately be placed.
Those dynamics echo modern “mother-and-baby homes” and crisis pregnancy centers in the United States.
Liberty University’s Godparent Home, for example, houses unmarried pregnant students and has faced criticism from former residents and reproductive-rights advocates who argue the program pressures women toward adoption and conservative family structures.
The crisis pregnancy centers promoted through Moms.gov have likewise been criticized for spreading medically inaccurate information about abortion and contraception while steering pregnant women away from abortion and toward adoption.
Critics argue many of these centers present themselves as healthcare clinics despite operating with little medical oversight.
Pronatalism and Body Politics
For authoritarian movements, reproduction is rarely treated as purely personal. Childbearing becomes tied to nationalism, morality and demographic control.
Writer Da’Shaun Harrison describes “body fascism” as the promotion of an “ideal” body type and family structure in service of nationalist politics, while marginalized bodies face increased control and erasure.
Moms.gov is not Nazi Germany. But historians have long documented how governments use pronatalist rhetoric during periods of demographic anxiety—elevating motherhood, discouraging reproductive autonomy and defining which families are most valuable to the nation.
With its rampant misinformation and glorification of motherhood, the site fits squarely within that tradition.
