FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: [email protected]
Date: May 21, 2025
Pro-Life Leaders Applaud Bipartisan Bill to Make Childbirth Free and Address Root Causes of Abortion
WASHINGTON, D.C. — For decades, our national conversation on abortion has ignored a fundamental truth: If we want to reduce abortion, we must eliminate the crushing financial burden of giving birth. A new bipartisan bill in the U.S. Senate is turning-point legislation in America’s approach to childbirth — not as a privilege, but as a protected right.
The newly introduced Supporting Healthy Moms and Babies Act, sponsored by Senators Hyde-Smith, Kaine, Hawley, and Gillibrand, takes a bold step toward closing the financial divide. By eliminating cost-sharing for prenatal, delivery, and postpartum care for families with private insurance, the bill recognizes what advocates have long said: Birth should be free, and policy should empower women to choose life without financial coercion.
“This bill is a societal compact, a declaration that America is committed to women and children: our shared future,” said Catherine Glenn Foster, President and CEO of First Rights Global and co-founder of the Make Birth Free initiative. ”For too long, America has treated pregnancy as a private burden instead of a public good. No woman should live in fear of getting pregnant, dreading the hospital bills, the debt, the uphill battle of simply bringing a child into the world. These costs aren’t just unjust; they’re dangerous. They send a clear, coercive message that abortion is cheaper, and for women without disposable income, that message can sound like a mandate.”
The bill reframes pro-life policy around economic justice, pushing for a federal guarantee of no-cost childbirth — a critical first step in transforming our healthcare system to meet women where they are.
“This is a bold, compassionate step toward real reproductive justice,” added Kristen Day, Executive Director of Democrats for Life of America and co-founder of the Make Birth Free initiative. “By removing the financial barriers to childbirth, this bill supports women, children, and families at their most vulnerable moment. No woman should have to choose between her baby and her bank account. Democrats for Life applauds the lawmakers behind this proposal and urges swift passage. This is what it means to be both pro-life and pro-woman.”
In January 2023, Foster and Day published the white paper “Make Birth Free: A Vision for Congress to Empower American Mothers, Families and Communities”, which detailed the astronomical costs of the average childbirth — $19,000 — and the policies Congress should look to adopt to make childbirth, as an intrinsic part of life, a core fundamental right in America.
Make Birth Free focuses its efforts on promoting an approach to life that offers compassion, not compulsion, and honors birth rather than commodifying it. All women should be free to choose life — not because they’re forced to and not merely because we’ve made it possible, but because it’s celebrated.
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