The Federal Pregnancy Website That Isn't Telling You Everything

Reproductive Health & Informed Care

The government just launched moms.gov. Here's what it says, what it leaves out, and why it matters if you're navigating a pregnancy in Champaign-Urbana right now.

Imagine you just found out you're pregnant. Maybe it was planned — maybe it absolutely wasn't. Maybe you're excited, maybe you're terrified, maybe you're somewhere in the middle of all of it at once. You open your laptop and Google "pregnancy resources." And somewhere in the results, you find an official-looking .gov website called moms.gov, launched by the federal government just this past Mother's Day. It looks like a neutral, helpful starting point. You trust it, because it's the government. It ends with .gov.

Here's what we need you to know: moms.gov is not a neutral resource. It was built with an agenda, and that agenda shapes every single thing it tells you — and everything it deliberately doesn't.

We're not here to tell you what decision to make about your pregnancy. That is entirely yours to make. We are here to make sure you have the full picture, because you deserve accurate information. And right now, a federal website is actively working against that.

You deserve to make decisions about your own body with complete, accurate information. Not a curated version designed to steer you toward one outcome.

What moms.gov actually is

The Trump regime launched moms.gov on Mother's Day 2025 through the Department of Health and Human Services. On the surface it looks like a comprehensive pregnancy resource — there's information about nutrition, breastfeeding, mental health, prenatal care. Some of that information is genuinely fine. But the moment you start looking at how it's structured and who it points you to, the picture gets a lot murkier.

The central feature — the thing the site is most prominently built around — is a directory of "pregnancy support centers." Those centers are listed alongside Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), which are legitimate, licensed, sliding-scale community health clinics. The problem is that these two types of facilities are not the same thing at all, and moms.gov presents them as if they are.

The receipt

The "find a pregnancy center near you" locator on moms.gov doesn't link to a neutral medical directory. It links directly to optionline.org — a tool run by Heartbeat International, a global Christian anti-abortion organization that explicitly exists to steer people away from abortion. This is not a neutral referral service. It is an ideological one, dressed up as a resource on a .gov website.

Crisis pregnancy centers: what they are and why it matters

The "pregnancy centers" that moms.gov is directing you to are commonly called crisis pregnancy centers, or CPCs. There are around 2,500 to 3,000 of them across the country — which is actually more than the number of licensed abortion providers in the U.S. Most are religiously affiliated nonprofits. Most are not licensed medical facilities. Many are not staffed by licensed healthcare providers, even when they look exactly like a clinic on the outside — complete with lab coats, ultrasound equipment, and clinical décor.

CPCs are ideologically opposed to abortion, and in many cases, to contraception. They will not give you neutral options counseling. They will not refer you for abortion care. Many will not discuss emergency contraception. And a documented pattern of congressional and state investigations going back to at least 2006 has found that many CPCs routinely tell people things that are medically false.

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Documented false claims — with sources

Abortion causes breast cancer. This is false. The American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists all explicitly state there is no link. CPCs have been telling people this for decades anyway.

"Post-Abortion Syndrome." This is not a real clinical diagnosis. It does not appear in the DSM-5. It is not recognized by the APA, the AMA, or ACOG. The best population-level research does not support the idea that abortion causes lasting psychiatric harm. Individual people's emotional experiences after an abortion are real and valid — but that's different from a manufactured syndrome designed to make people afraid of a legal medical procedure.

Abortion causes infertility. Also false. ACOG states clearly that abortion does not increase risk of infertility, ectopic pregnancy, or most future pregnancy complications.

A 2006 U.S. congressional investigation found that the majority of CPCs studied gave callers medically inaccurate information. Multiple state attorneys general have since confirmed similar findings. This is not a fringe concern. It is a documented, ongoing pattern

The delay tactic you need to know about

One of the most documented strategies CPCs use is time. A person calls or walks in, often scared, often early in a pregnancy, often just looking for a pregnancy test or an ultrasound. The CPC offers free services. Then another appointment. Then another. Each one moves the calendar forward. By the time the person realizes this isn't a neutral provider — that no one here is going to help them explore all their options — the gestational window for certain procedures may have narrowed or closed entirely.

This isn't accidental. It's a strategy. And it works best on people who are already overwhelmed, who don't know what questions to ask, who trusted that a place that looks like a clinic is acting like one.

A place that looks like a clinic and acts like an activist organization is a problem. You have a right to know the difference before you walk in.

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What moms.gov leaves out entirely

Here is what you will not find anywhere on moms.gov: information about abortion care. Information about emergency contraception. Neutral options counseling. A referral to Planned Parenthood. Any acknowledgment that abortion is a legal medical procedure in Illinois and across much of the country.

You also won't find balanced information about contraception. What you will find is a section promoting Fertility Awareness-Based Methods — natural family planning approaches — without any equivalent information about IUDs, implants, hormonal contraception, or other methods that have significantly higher real-world effectiveness. The site isn't presenting you with options. It's presenting you with a worldview.

That's not a resource. That's a political document with a .gov address.

One more thing worth naming

This same regime has cut or threatened to cut funding to programs that actually support maternal and infant health — including Title X family planning services, Medicaid-linked maternal health models, and the CMS Innovation Center's Transforming Maternal Health initiative. Reproductive health advocates and major medical organizations have raised serious alarms about what these cuts mean for pregnant people, particularly those in low-income communities and communities of color, who already face the worst maternal health outcomes in the developed world. A website full of "support resources" that links to anti-abortion organizations while the safety net underneath real prenatal care gets dismantled is worth naming for exactly what it is.

Who gets hurt by this

This isn't an abstract political debate. In Champaign-Urbana, we serve real people navigating real pregnancies — students at U of I who don't have a car and are searching for the nearest place that offers a free ultrasound, young parents trying to figure out what they're allowed to afford, immigrants who may not know their rights, trans and nonbinary people who walk into a "pregnancy center" expecting care and encounter judgment instead. These are the people who end up at CPCs when they're trying to find a clinic. And moms.gov just made that more likely.

People who are already carrying the most — already navigating systems that weren't built for them, already facing discrimination and gaps in care — are the most vulnerable to being steered wrong by a website that looks official and trustworthy. That's who this harms most.

What to actually use instead

If you're in Champaign-Urbana and you're navigating a pregnancy — any pregnancy, any stage, any decision — here are resources that will actually give you complete, accurate, judgment-free information.

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Real resources for C-U and Illinois

Planned Parenthood of Illinois offers comprehensive reproductive healthcare including abortion services, contraception, STI testing, prenatal referrals, and gender-affirming care. plannedparenthood.org/ppil

Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) are licensed community health clinics that see patients on a sliding scale regardless of insurance or income. Find one at findahealthcenter.hrsa.gov — this is the FQHC locator moms.gov also links to, and it's legitimately useful.

All-Options Talkline offers free, non-directive peer counseling for anyone navigating pregnancy — regardless of what decision you're considering or have already made. No judgment. No agenda. Call or text 1-888-493-0092 or visit all-options.org

National Abortion Federation Hotline provides referrals and financial assistance for abortion care: 1-800-772-9100

How to tell if a "pregnancy center" is a CPC

Ask directly: "Do you refer for abortion services?" and "Do you refer for emergency contraception?" If the answer is no, or if they deflect, you're at a CPC. Licensed reproductive health providers are required to give you neutral options counseling and can tell you exactly who on staff is licensed. CPCs are not and cannot.

Your options are yours

We want to say this clearly, because it's the whole point: whatever you're deciding about your pregnancy — continuing it, ending it, navigating loss, going through infertility, trying to figure out what you even want — your decision is valid. Our job, and the job of any ethical provider, is to make sure you have everything you need to make that decision for yourself. Not to make it for you.

A federal government website that withholds information, steers you toward ideologically motivated organizations, and presents all of that under the banner of neutral support isn't serving you. It's serving an agenda. You deserve to know the difference — and now you do.

If you're processing anything related to a pregnancy — fear, grief, complicated feelings after a decision, the weight of an unexpected positive test — therapy can be a space to put all of that down and actually breathe. We're here for that, too, whenever you need it.