Under Trump, a New Focus for a Birth Control Program: Helping Women Get Pregnant

A little-noticed plan for an “infertility training center” signals that the administration intends to take a new approach with Title X, which has long helped low-income women access contraception.

By Caroline Kitchener and Sheryl Gay Stolberg
July 18, 2025

The Trump administration intends to use funds from a decades-old federal program that provides birth control to low-income women to ramp up efforts to help aspiring mothers get pregnant, signaling a shift in policy that will appease both religious conservatives and adherents of its Make America Healthy Again agenda.

The first sign of the change appeared on a little-noticed government website last week, in a post offering a $1.5 million grant to start an “infertility training center.” The center would promote “holistic” approaches to combating infertility, such as menstrual cycle education classes that women also take to try to prevent pregnancy without using birth control.

The announcement of the training center is the clearest sign yet that the administration plans to take a new approach with the federal family planning program known as Title X, and point it more toward combating infertility, a goal that President Trump has made part of his agenda.

The announcement is also an early indication that the administration is backing an alternative approach to infertility — one supported by conservative and religious policy groups that are skeptical of in vitro fertilization, even after Mr. Trump promised as a candidate last year to make I.V.F. free. A formal White House report on infertility was delivered to the president in May, several months after Mr. Trump pledged in an executive order to lower the cost of I.V.F., but has not yet been released to the public.

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Caroline Kitchener is a Times reporter, writing about the American family.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg covers health policy for The Times from Washington. A former congressional and White House correspondent, she focuses on the intersection of health policy and politics.