The “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement has exploded in recent years, blending wellness culture, political populism, and deep distrust of mainstream medicine. Under current federal leadership, MAHA is reshaping health policy. But behind its promises of empowerment and clean living lies a troubling pattern: shifting responsibility onto women, amplifying shaky science, and ignoring systemic drivers of poor health.
MAHA began as a health crusade led by RFK Jr., long known for his anti-vaccine activism and “natural health” rhetoric. Now, with RFK Jr. in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), MAHA has moved from the fringes into the center of federal health policy. The HHS website prominently declares “Our priority: Make America Healthy Again,” highlighting how the movement has become a driving force in Washington, shaping debates on everything from drug labeling to school lunch programs. At its core, the movement claims that chronic disease, developmental disorders, and rising health costs are linked to “toxins” in food, medicine, and the environment.
The MAHA movement highlights America’s health crisis, citing that 6 in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease, 1 in 4 American children suffer from allergies, and 40% of Americans are diabetic or prediabetic. These statistics are not invented, they reflect real and pressing health concerns. Chronic disease and diabetes are among the leading drivers of medical costs and poor health outcomes in the United States, and the prevalence of allergies among children has indeed climbed in recent decades. The problem is not whether these issues are real, but how the MAHA movement chooses to frame and address those issues.
Most recently, MAHA’s influence became clear when the FDA announced plans to add warning labels to acetaminophen (Tylenol) claiming its use during pregnancy increases the risk of autism in children. Yet science does not support such certainty. While some studies suggest correlations between autism and Tylenol, they remain inconclusive, and no causal link has been proven. There is expert consensus that untreated medical conditions, such as fever, can endanger maternal and child health, and that Tylenol is a safe option to treat pain and fever during pregnancy. In fact, experts, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), warn in a statement that untreated pain and fever in pregnancy can carry serious risks of their own. Steven J. Fleischman, President of ACOG said that suggesting Tylenol during pregnancy causes autism is “not only highly concerning to clinicians but also irresponsible when considering the harmful and confusing message they send to pregnant patients….”
Still, the announcement was treated by MAHA as a victory after years of pressuring regulators. The consequences, however, fall disproportionately on women. Pregnant people may now feel guilty for taking needed medication or face stigma for using Tylenol at all. Once again, maternal choices are placed under a microscope, while systemic drivers of health outcomes, like poverty, pollution, and inequities in care, are sidelined.
The Tylenol statement is only one piece of a broader agenda. MAHA’s policy proposals have included investigations into vaccines and overhauls of the nation’s childhood immunization schedule, stricter limits on school lunches, campaigns against “ultra-processed” foods, warnings about the newborn hepatitis B vaccine, and heightened warnings about everyday household chemicals. While framed as empowering families in the MAHA Report, these measures often translate into heavier burdens on women: more time spent cooking from scratch, researching ingredients, and monitoring children’s environments. In fact, women spend 2.4 times as much time with children as fathers do. The movement’s strategy emphasizes “educating parents” rather than advancing robust public health interventions. In environmental health, for example, solutions focus on individual behavior, “research your own food,” “know your farmer,” while largely rejecting stronger regulatory oversight.
Even more troubling are the moral undertones. The MAHA agenda has drawn on rhetoric that stigmatizes contraceptive use, suggests that birth control causes infertility, and links vaccines like hepatitis B to “immoral” sexual behavior. These arguments reinforce a framework of purity and blame: that women’s bodies must remain “natural” and “untainted,” and that illness or infertility are moral failings. This framing is not only inaccurate, it shifts responsibility onto individual women while letting systemic inequities persist.
The result is a policy agenda that polices women’s choices instead of addressing systemic causes of poor health. And those systemic causes are impossible to ignore. Communities of color and low-income families face higher rates of chronic disease, not because mothers aren’t making the “right” choices, but because of structural inequities: food deserts, environmental toxins concentrated in poor neighborhoods, lack of affordable healthcare, and the stress of economic insecurity. By focusing on maternal behavior rather than these broader determinants, MAHA not only overlooks the root causes of illness but also reinforces inequities, placing the heaviest burdens on women who already have the least support.
The real path to a healthier America doesn’t lie in blaming mothers. It lies in building equitable healthcare systems, holding corporations accountable, and trusting women to make informed choices about their own bodies.
