Trump Admin Pulls Research Funding To Protect Pregnant Women From Domestic Violence

The Trump administration abruptly pulled funding last week for a research grant meant to protect pregnant women from domestic violence because it was categorized as a “DEI” study.

The National Institute of Health grant funded a in February that the department would cap indirect costs for grants at 15% as part of DOGE’s larger government spending objective. But the domestic violence and pregnancy grant had an 8% indirect cost ― “an incredibly cheap grant, even by their [NIH’S] own standards,” Fielding-Miller said.

“It just strikes me as ironic that this was canceled in the name of efficiency, when really I don’t know how they expect people to write science that is more efficient than this,” Nicholas Metheny, a co-investigator of the research, told HuffPost.

Sarah Peitzmeier, the third researcher who spoke with HuffPost, pointed out that domestic violence during pregnancy is linked to often larger, more costly infant and maternal health issues.

“We know intimate partner violence during pregnancy is linked to miscarriage, hemorrhage, placental disruption and postpartum depression. It’s also linked to negative infant outcomes, preterm birth, low birth weight,” Peitzmeier said. “These are really non-partisan issues that everyone should care about.”

“And these are expensive issues, too,” Metheny added. “These are things that cost the American taxpayer millions and millions and millions of dollars a year. By going to the source and the root problem, which sometimes is IPV [intimate partner violence], then this is one way to actually decrease unnecessary health care costs and improve the health of pregnant people.”

An estimated 324,000 pregnant people are abused each year by an intimate partner, and that number is likely to increase as more people stay pregnant after the fall of Roe v. Wade. Since the landmark Supreme Court decision, calls to the National Domestic Violence Hotline about reproductive coercion ― a form of intimate partner violence specific to pregnancy and reproductive health ― have doubled across the country.

Researchers in a 2024 study found that there’s “a dire need for universal screening and interventions,” after concluding that pregnant women are more likely to be murdered by an abusive partner if they live in a state where abortion is restricted.

“They’re systematically removing women, women of color, people of color, sexual and gender minorities from the pool of researchers. And what the end point of that is is an academy that is systematically more white, more male, more cisgender, more heterosexual, more wealthy,” Fielding-Miller said.

“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,” she added. “So even after the immediate shocks of this are done, the ripple effects are going to live on for decades.”

Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) for the National Domestic Violence Hotline. In the U.S., call 1-866-331-9474 or text “loveis” to 22522 for the National Dating Abuse Helpline.