Here’s One Idea to Stop Our Fertility Rate Decline: Make Childbirth Free

Thousands are preparing for the annual March for Life in the capital, sending a clear message to the world: Life is a gift. Still, many are missing the full message, seeing the movement as focused solely on ending abortion. While seeing a historic and permanent end to abortion is indeed the ultimate goal, one we hope is achieved as soon as possible, we are also working diligently to ensure life can flourish past birth and to its natural end.

At a time when the national birth rate is the lowest in history, and families are struggling to make ends meet with multiple incomes, the pro-life movement must stand in the gap, advocating change. I can testify as a father of biological, adopted, and foster children to the unquestionable financial strain children have on families. How much greater is that challenge for single mothers facing unexpected pregnancies?

For more than a decade, economic instability has been cited as one, if not the top, reason women choose abortion. Regardless of your viewpoint on fiscal policy, these women need support. When the political divide is at its widest, this is a matter on which anyone can find common ground.

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Last year, a bipartisan group of legislators in both the House and Senate introduced the Supporting Healthy Moms and Babies Act to make birth free. No woman or family should have to fear the crippling costs of childbirth or the gaps in insurance coverage, which remain urgent and unresolved problems. Congress must act now and pass this bill in 2026 to ensure every mother and baby can start their journey with security and peace of mind.

The pro-life movement recognizes this is only a first, however significant, step. Anyone who says advocates of life are only “pro-birth” is mistaken. We have been preparing the downstream support since before Roe v. Wade, when the first pregnancy center opened in 1967. Pregnancy centers that provide free or low-cost counseling, material goods, referrals for housing, parenting classes, and, often, medical care are the continuation of the “Make Birth Free” agenda.

At the state level, pro-life legislators can further support pregnant women bearing financial burdens by creating policy pathways for pregnancy center support. While many states already provide grants to these centers, states should also consider introducing a pregnancy options tax credit that allows taxpayers’ charitable donations to be deducted.

When donors, many of whom are already struggling financially, receive a tax break for their contributions, more women will be empowered by the support pregnancy centers provide.

Seeing more than one million new clients and providing more than $452 million in services in 2024, pregnancy centers can do still more if supported.

Child and adoption tax credits can also be expanded for families, a step Congress has already taken under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. However, these credits can continue to be expanded and strengthened, giving greater breaks to families with greater demonstrated financial need or single mothers with young children.

This approach can also be expanded among the states. Seventeen states and Washington have state-level child tax credits, with only 12 of those credits refundable, meaning families receive the full credit regardless of owing a lower total — a strategy all 50 states should be looking to implement.

And if the abortion industry is defunded, both federally and across every state, those taxpayer dollars will be freed up to be spent on life-affirming medical care and social support for families, including rerouting the funding back to making birth free.

The pro-life movement has not wavered in its bold declaration that life is a gift. But leaving even one woman with the feeling she has no other option than abortion means our mission is incomplete, so we must continue to march and fight for that gift until abortion is nothing but a relic of the past.

LifeNews Note: John Mize is the CEO of Americans United for Life.

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