How Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Fails Parents of Stillborn Babies—Analysis

My son was stillborn in the summer of 2017. Everything was fine in the pregnancy—until it wasn’t. At 37 weeks pregnant, I woke up at night with what felt like a constant mild contraction. We weren’t overly concerned. But because my brother was in town and could stay with our daughters, we decided to get checked out at our hospital’s labor and delivery department. They couldn’t find his heartbeat.

Caleb became one of the 21,000 pregnancies that ends in stillbirth each year in the U.S. That includes babies stillborn very late in pregnancy, like Caleb was. Each year, around 3,500 babies die after 37 weeks, but before being delivered.

(A quick note: I use the word “baby” when discussing my son’s stillbirth because that’s how I view him. This language, I recognize, is controversial to some as anti-abortion activists often weaponize “baby” to restrict reproductive autonomy. My focus, however, is to empower the pregnant person. Others may prefer different words for their experience with pregnancy loss, and they should be able to use whatever language fits their experience.)

I, like many who have experienced pregnancy loss, have long grappled with feelings of failure. I felt I failed to have a “successful” pregnancy; my body failed to do what it was supposed to do; that it failed to produce a living baby. Now, to add insult to injury, the Trump administration has introduced new economic incentives to encourage people to get pregnant—but only rewards live births.

As the parent of a stillborn child and a professor who has studied the matter deeply, I believe Trump’s attempts to pay people to have children, coupled with growing pronatalist sentiments in the U.S., demonstrate the hypocrisy of the administration’s so-called “pro-life” policies.

‘We want more babies’

Pronatalism, an ideology focused on encouraging people to have children based on the belief that reduced birth rates are a root cause of various societal and economic problems, is rising in popularity. In the U.S., President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have both expressed their desire to increase the nation’s birth rates (especially for white Americans).

Before his inauguration, Trump said explicitly, “We want more babies.” In January 2025, at the anti-abortion March for Life, Vance similarly stated that he wants “more babies in the United States,” ideally born to more “beautiful young men and women.”

Just a few months after Trump’s inauguration, his administration was reportedly weighing multiple policy options to incentivize parenthood. These early ideas included a “baby bonus” payment to mothers after childbirth and efforts to “educate” women about their menstrual cycles so they can better understand when they are most likely to conceive. His team also considered expanding the federal child tax credit, which gives tax breaks to parents with qualifying children to help offset the costs of raising them. Some of those proposals ended up in the president’s recently-passed “big, beautiful bill.”

The potential “baby bonus” morphed into a “Trump account,” an investment account for every newborn U.S. citizen that receives $1,000 in government money, in the “big, beautiful bill.” That money is invested to grow until the child turns 18, when it can be withdrawn and used for qualifying purchases on education and home ownership. Experts say this policy especially benefits upper-income parents who have the means to make the allowed additional contributions of up to $5,000 a year to the account.

The new law also increases the amount of the federal child tax credit. The amount credited to taxpayers for each child had been set to decrease from $2,000 to $1,000 in 2026. Instead, it will now permanently be set at $2,200.

Importantly, these financial benefits are available only for those who produce a living infant. None of this money is currently available for stillbirths. A stillborn baby does nothing for live birth rates. A pregnant person can do everything “right” for 40 weeks of pregnancy, and give birth on or around their due date (yes, stillbirth still requires childbirth). But if the baby is stillborn, that person—that parent—is ineligible for any of Trump’s incentives.

These policies will likely accentuate the feelings of failure inherent in pregnancy loss. They certainly do for me.

Reducing stillbirths would be very ‘pro-life’

In this country, some people are much more likely to “fail” to obtain these live-birth related incentives.

Black women are more than twice as likely as white women to have a stillbirth. Lower-income women face double the risk of stillbirth compared to women with higher incomes.

Financial incentives tied to live childbirth won’t reduce stillbirths or address these disparities. The Trump administration shows no interest in the U.S.’ alarming stillbirth rate, even though it is higher than many of our peer countries, and even though reducing stillbirths would be an effective way to increase the nation’s birth rate.

In Trump’s quest to promote pregnancy, he has frequently expressed his desire to increase access in vitro fertilization (IVF), seemingly unaware that IVF is also a risk factor that doubles—if not triples—the chance of stillbirth. Moreover, his administration’s recent cuts to Medicaid will hinder access to prenatal care, and less prenatal care is associated with an increased risk of stillbirth.

Reducing stillbirths is assuredly a “pro-life” cause. But this “pro-life” president’s policies will not help.

Some parents whose babies die after birth can get benefits

Financial incentives for live birth cruelly reinforce feelings of parental failure. But that doesn’t mean it would make sense to give those same rewards to parents after a stillbirth.

A stillborn baby doesn’t need an investment account. Caleb isn’t going to college. He’s dead. When I started working on my family’s taxes in early 2018, I knew Caleb wouldn’t count for the child tax credit. I wasn’t going to incur costs in raising him—I don’t get to raise him.

But some parents whose children died shortly after birth can still get the Trump investment account and the child tax credit.

By law, if a baby is born alive—defined as breathing, or showing other evidence of life like having a heartbeat, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or voluntary muscle movement—the newborn counts as a child for the federal tax credit, even if the baby dies minutes later. Live childbirth has always been a prerequisite for the federal tax credit. For the new Trump account, if a baby lives long enough for its parents to practically open an investment account, they could obtain that incentive. The account would cease to be a Trump account when the child dies.

Live birth is the dividing line here. It signifies a material difference between parents of a stillborn baby and the parents of a deceased newborn.

But there’s no material difference. Parents of a baby stillborn late in pregnancy are, practically, in the same position as parents whose newborn has died. Both incurred similar costs in preparing for the child, and neither will be buying any more diapers.

Technically, live childbirth does improve the lagging U.S. birth rate. But like stillborns, infants who die shortly after birth don’t grow up and contribute to society. So both sets of parents are in a similar place, from the pronatalist standpoint. They won’t be raising that child; they’ve “failed” to add another body to the American workforce.

Yet the government is signaling that parents of deceased newborns are deserving of government benefits, and parents like me are not.

All parents need more help

I think it makes sense to apply some live birth financial benefits to stillbirth. Yet many in the reproductive rights movement find this idea extremely problematic because of its implications for abortion access. Applying the child tax credit to a fetus could theoretically establish “fetal personhood”—the anti-abortion legal concept that a fetus has the same legal rights and protections as a living person.

As a result, abortion rights advocates are extremely hesitant about, if not fully opposed to, the idea of tax credits for fetuses.

But it’s possible to legislate financial support without contributing to anti-abortion “fetal personhood” arguments. And that’s by focusing those policies not on the baby but on the people—the stillbirth parents—who would receive the financial support.

Eight states provide tax credits for stillbirth. The aim is to help parents with the surprisingly expensive costs of stillbirth. This includes some “fetal personhood”-curious, abortion-banning states like Arkansas, Louisiana, and North Dakota. But it also includes states where abortion remains legal, including Arizona, Connecticut, Michigan, and Minnesota.

Connecticut currently offers the largest income tax credit for stillbirth in the nation, at $2,500. It took effect on July 1, 2022—one week after the Supreme Court erased the federal right to abortion, and the same day Connecticut’s first-in-the-nation law protecting abortion providers who care for out-of-state patients took effect.

Giving people a tax credit following a stillbirth won’t erase the inherent feelings of failure. But it does signify compassion and recognition. The benefits have tangible impact, too, by helping parents with costs associated with pregnancy and birth. That resource is especially important when you consider who is most at risk of experiencing stillbirth—Black women, women with lesser economic means, and those who got pregnant via IVF.

About one-third of pregnancies don’t result in a live birth. Pregnancy loss is not a failure. It is an unfortunate, yet common, way for pregnancy to end. (It’s been eight years since Caleb’s death, and I still need to remind myself of this.) Government policies need not—and should not—treat stillbirth as a failure, but instead as something that deserves compassion. And it’s possible to do so without threatening abortion rights.

The post How Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Fails Parents of Stillborn Babies—Analysis appeared first on Rewire News Group.