Elon Musk has made headlines warning that civilization will crumble if people don’t start having more kids. But even as he promotes higher birthrates, his Department of Government Officiency — known as “DOGE” — is abruptly slashing billions in healthcare funding meant to support pregnant women, new mothers, and their babies.
Sevonna Brown, a Brooklyn-based maternal health advocate and founder of Sanctuary Medicine, was one of many stunned to receive notice that her $2 million National Institutes of Health grant had been canceled overnight. Her organization, part of the New York CHAMP Center of Excellence, had provided critical services to expecting and new mothers — including lactation support, home visits for high-risk pregnancies, mental health screenings, and domestic violence shelter referrals.
Now, all of it has come to a halt.
Brown’s network spent more than a decade building support systems for vulnerable families. “The world has literally gone dark,” she said. With DOGE cutting more than $10 billion in Department of Health and Human Services grants, the safety net for new parents — especially in marginalized communities — is collapsing.
And the irony is hard to miss.
Musk, father to at least 14 children, has repeatedly declared that declining birthrates are a national emergency. He’s funded fertility research, offered his sperm to friends, and posted on social media that people should have more kids — yet under his watch, vital programs that actually make parenthood safer are being dismantled.
In recent months, DOGE suspended a $168 million maternal health initiative in Michigan, halted over $27 million in grants to women’s health centers, and eliminated funding for postpartum care at the Morehouse School of Medicine. Grants to help mothers on Medicaid and programs serving Black and Brown communities have been especially hard hit.
Medical anthropologist Emilie Rodriguez, who co-led the CHAMP grant, says it’s not just a funding issue — it’s ideological. “We were told to remove words like ‘women,’ ‘Black,’ ‘undocumented,’ and ‘underserved’ from our grant language,” she said. “It’s not just censorship. It’s erasure.”
One of the programs affected, CHAMP, aimed to improve outcomes for Black women in New York City — where maternal mortality rates are nine times higher than for white women. Victoria St. Clair, a doula and community health advocate, said, “No one should be afraid to become pregnant or start a family here… but too many are.”
DOGE’s budget-slashing spree has reached far beyond maternal care. Cuts include over $1 million for child mental health studies in Massachusetts, $750,000 for pediatric respiratory treatment in Seattle, and nearly $25 million in pediatric HIV prevention and treatment at hospitals across Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and beyond. The biggest blow? DOGE eliminated $12 billion in funding for state-run child vaccination programs — a system credited with saving more than 150 million lives over the past five decades.
Despite DOGE’s claims that these cuts will trim government waste, healthcare leaders argue the opposite. Dr. Uma Reddy, who oversaw the CHAMP project, says preventive care for mothers saves taxpayer dollars by reducing emergency visits, complicated births, and long-term health issues for both mothers and children.
Even conservative media figures are starting to speak out. Fox News host Jesse Watters said his own mother was furious about the cuts — and his sister, a medical professional, could lose her job as a result.
As government funding disappears, community providers are stepping up — often at great personal cost. “We’re sharing food, doing mutual aid, pulling from our own pockets,” Brown said. “We can’t leave moms alone. We can’t let babies go hungry. So we’re making it happen. But it’s breaking us.”
