Democrats Raise Alarm Over Anti-Abortion Moms.gov

Today, Congresswomen Suzan DelBene (WA-01), Suzanne Bonamici (OR-01), Emilia Sykes (OH-13), and Judy Chu (CA-28) led 83 of their colleagues in conducting oversight of the recently-launched Moms.gov. The letter demands that Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. provide answers about the department's goals in developing, funding, reviewing, and operating Moms.gov.

Moms.gov launched in May with the purported goal of offering guidance to expectant mothers, but the website instead features potentially harmful information about crisis pregnancy centers and puts sensitive health information at risk.

"This website purports to be a resource to support the health and well-being of women and families, yet it deceives vulnerable people by sending them to anti-abortion centers, or so-called 'crisis pregnancy centers,' that are not real medical providers," the lawmakers wrote to Secretary Kennedy. "Additionally, these organizations often engage in questionable data collection practices of individuals' sensitive health information. We have long raised concerns about deceptive practices that jeopardize patient privacy and mislead people seeking reproductive health care, and we urge the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to guarantee that all federally supported public-facing maternal health resources provide medically accurate, evidence-based, and comprehensive information and protect Americans' private health information."

The "Find Pregnancy Centers Near You" feature on Moms.gov appears to direct users to Option Line, a 24/7 contact center managed by Heartbeat International, a nationwide anti-abortion organization and network of over 1,000 crisis pregnancy centers. Heartbeat International's mission is to make abortion "unwanted today and unthinkable for future generations," and it has faced significant scrutiny regarding the collection, storage, and handling of sensitive reproductive health information through services including the Option Line.

"Deciding whether or when to bear a child is a deeply personal decision that should be made by the patient and trusted health care providers using medically-accurate and comprehensive information, not by opponents of reproductive freedom," the lawmakers continued. "The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services already has resources with comprehensive information for women on reproductive health, including pregnancy, birth control methods, infertility, sexually-transmitted infections, and more. Moms.gov is duplicitous, a waste of government resources, and a thinly-veiled attempt to push a far right agenda onto people at a vulnerable time in their lives."

The letter is supported by the Democratic Women's Caucus, Reproductive Freedom for All, National Partnership for Women & Families, National Women's Law Center, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and Power to Decide.

The full letter can be found here.