Pregnant Foreign Aid Workers Beg Trump Administration for Compassion Amid Cuts

Yomiuri Shimbun

26-04-2025

Moriah Ratner/For The Washington Post
The Trump administration's cuts are stripping expectant parents of their parental leave, health insurance, income and, for overseas USAID workers, housing.
President Donald Trump has said 'we want more babies,' and the White House has reportedly examined ways to persuade Americans to have more children. But the actions of the Elon Musk-led U.S. DOGE Service have left many pregnant federal workers without the parental leave, health insurance and income they had thought they could rely on when they chose to conceive.
Pregnant employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has many overseas workers and has been gutted by DOGE-driven cuts, are in particularly dire straits. Many of the agency's workers are losing their housing along with some or all of their parental leave as they're forced to move back to the United States from abroad ahead of their due dates.
Dozens of expectant parents employed by USAID have begged the State Department to postpone their dismissals, which are set for July 1 or Sept. 2, or honor previously guaranteed parental leave. So far, they have received little help – and say that laying them off within days or weeks of their due dates flies in the face of the Trump administration's commitment to a pro-family agenda.
'I am almost wishing I deliver prematurely so that at least I would still have coverage after I deliver,' said one woman whose family lives overseas and whose baby is set to arrive within days of her husband's layoff date. 'Then at least it comes out. It can get the help it needs before my health insurance cuts off.'
The Washington Post interviewed 13 expecting or postpartum parents who say the Trump administration's cuts have forced them to make overseas moves, ripped away their housing or eliminated their parental leave. The mass layoffs also strip pregnant and postpartum workers of their health insurance and income, leaving many uncertain about where they will live and how they will pay for postpartum medical care.
Many of the agency's workers lack homes in the United States, don't have spouses with independent incomes and rely on specific pregnancy-related travel and lodging benefits. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a group of diplomats in February that the agency would consider making accommodations for employees in need, including in situations such as pregnancy.
So far, expecting families say, such accommodations haven't materialized.
The State Department did not answer questions from The Post about whether officials were considering granting the expecting workers' requests to postpone layoff dates. A spokesperson said the cuts made some 'disruptions' inevitable but said Rubio and department leaders were committed to 'ensuring that USAID personnel remain safe.'
'State and USAID leadership are focused on providing the smoothest transitions possible to minimize disruption and ensure the continued safety and wellness of our personnel, and the orderly repatriation of colleagues posted overseas,' the State Department spokesperson said.
The families described a more than two-month period of uncertainty and confusion that has caused stress so extreme some women feared for the health of their pregnancies – or began regretting the decision to have a baby entirely. The families interviewed by The Post – with due dates ranging from spring to late summer – all spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared that being identified as having spoken to the press could affect their requests for relief.
Workers said they had received little response to their individual appeals to postpone their layoff dates over the last several weeks. A group of more than a dozen USAID employees sent a fresh plea to the State Department on Tuesday, asking for the travel and lodging benefits and paid parental leave to be guaranteed for all families who have requested pregnancy-related extensions.
'I thought my situation might be special because it was pregnancy-related, because it involved the life of an unborn child,' one father-to-be who will lose his job and overseas home two weeks before his wife's scheduled C-section said in an interview this week. 'Here's an American child. … But no, there's absolutely no consideration.'
The expecting USAID workers have formed an anonymous group chat for pregnant employees that has about 70 members, though some are from the same families. Based on the group chat, one member estimated that at least two to three dozen expecting families are being affected by the layoffs.
In response to questions from The Post, a State Department spokesperson said USAID employees can request reasonable or medical accommodations and have done so. The spokesperson noted that employee benefits won't be impacted until the date their employment ends and that overseas personnel would retain their housing until their separation dates but did not say whether the State Department would consider postponing those dates.
The State Department has guaranteed benefits for 45 days before birth and 45 days postpartum – special benefits known as medical evacuation that are separate from parental leave – for those who leave to give birth while employed. Employees who begin that 90-day period will be able to complete it before the government ends their employment, the State Department said.
Employees said they remained uncertain as to whether people whose layoff dates fall within that 90-day period will receive the full benefits. One woman who is scheduled to lose her job before the period is up said she has not received clarity from the State Department about the situation.
USAID – which distributes billions in lifesaving food, water and medical aid a year and runs humanitarian projects around the globe – was one of the first agencies the Trump administration began to dismantle under DOGE's stated mission of reducing alleged government waste.
On March 28, the Trump administration moved to formally abolish the agency and eliminated most of those left in their jobs, sending out notices with July 1 or Sept. 2 layoff dates.
When those notices set off crises for families overseas with children in school, receiving medical treatment, expecting babies or in other circumstances, the State Department seemed ill-prepared to respond, the workers interviewed for this story said.
Rubio told staffers at the February meeting that the State Department did not want to uproot families. 'That's not our intention. We don't want to achieve that,' he said, according to CBS News. He cited pregnant workers or people needing medical care as examples of people who might need exceptions.
The parents interviewed by The Post said those assurances now feel like empty promises. By Wednesday, several told The Post they were still hoping the State Department would provide a solution to a situation that feels increasingly desperate.
The woman whose C-section is two weeks after her husband's layoff date is stuck overseas, unable to travel to the United States because of pregnancy complications. They will lose their housing just before birth and plan on draining their savings to move into a vacation rental, the couple said.
Another family has to return overseas to pack up their home after their baby comes – forcing the mother and newborn to stay in the United States alone while the father goes back for their possessions.
The mother said she is so consumed with making appeals to higher-ups and job-hunting that she sometimes forgets she's pregnant. She dwells on guilt about bringing her baby into an unstable situation. She refused her doctor's suggestion to induce labor because she didn't feel ready to give birth.
A third mother is set to lose her government health insurance less than two weeks before her due date and is afraid she will also lose the money she saved for the delivery in her flexible spending account. If so, she doesn't know how she will pay for the delivery.
'I feel betrayed,' she said. 'I come from a politically mixed family, so I want to believe that someone like Marco Rubio, when he says that he's going to make accommodations for families. … I wanted to believe that that was true.'
Instead, she sees the administration as having disrespected families who are in turmoil. 'It makes me feel like a fool for believing in the bipartisan process, I guess,' she said. 'Because I know the Trump voters in my family would not agree with the way I'm being treated right now.'
In addition to stressing about where her family will live after the baby comes, she and her husband are mourning the loss of their vision for their family. She is pregnant with their second child, and they had always planned to have a third – but now, they are reconsidering that idea because of the financial impacts of the layoffs.
'I feel like I'm grieving. I was really excited for the life that I was going to give my kids,' she said. 'And I'm just grieving that I won't be able to give them that life anymore.'