Supposedly ‘pro-life’ president cool with pregnant women getting beaten

President Donald Trump, a self-proclaimed “protector” of women, is showing where he truly stands as his administration quietly withdraws research funding aimed at safeguarding pregnant women from their abusers.

Last week, the Trump administration cut the grant allegedly because it was categorized as a study related to “diversity, equity, and inclusion”—something his administration has been hell-bent on eliminating since he returned to the White House—according to HuffPost, which broke the news on Thursday.

The grant, issued by the National Institutes of Health, funded a two-year project to assist early-career doctors in studying the connection between intimate partner violence and pregnancy. Awarded in September, it was intended to establish a nationwide training program to enable researchers and clinicians to better assess the correlation. It also included a mentoring program to support “underrepresented early-stage investigators.”

Trump has not publicly commented on why his administration slashed research that could save pregnant women’s lives. However, this is the same man whose policies (and personal history) have made it evident that he doesn’t genuinely care about women, especially when it comes to reproductive rights.

Moreover, it’s possible the funding was eliminated by mistake—caught up in Trump’s broader campaign against DEI initiatives. Researchers informed HuffPost that NIH abruptly canceled the grant, stating the project “no longer effectuates agency priorities.”

“So called diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) studies are often used to support unlawful discrimination on the basis of race and other protected characteristics, which harms the health of Americans. Therefore, it is the policy of NIH not to prioritize such research programs,” read the termination letter from NIH’s Office of Extramural Research, which was reviewed by HuffPost.

If this was yet another unintended casualty of Trump’s DEI purge, it may have been targeted simply because it was related to women and/or a societal inequity. As HuffPost highlighted, the administration’s sweeping, poorly defined crusade against DEI has led to cuts affecting everything from family planning services to tree-planting programs.

Trump has long threatened to reshape NIH, and as part of his broader initiative to cut spending, the department announced in February plans to implement a 15% cap on indirect costs for grants. However, it remains unclear why this specific grant was singled out, given that it had an 8% indirect cost.

“The logistics is they have a list of 100 naughty words that include ‘women’ and ‘female inequity,’ and I think whoever was wielding ‘control F’ that day noticed that our grant had ‘equity’ in the title,” Rebecca Fielding-Miller, a principal investigator on the research and professor at the University of California San Diego, told HuffPost.

Like Trump’s other cuts, this one could have serious repercussions. Each year, approximately 324,000 pregnant people experience intimate partner violence—a figure that will likely increase as Republicans continue to undermine abortion rights.

“It will be an ongoing feedback loop of what those folks think is important research, and that means less research about intimate partner violence, less research about health disparities,” Fielding-Miller added. “So even after the immediate shocks of this are done, the ripple effects are going to live on for decades.”