Hope For American Healthcare: Meet The MAHA Moms

I first became intrigued by the MAHA Moms about 8 months ago. As I disentangled the groups with similar concerns and names — Moms Across America, MAHA Mommas and MAHA Action, among others — I discovered the MAHA Moms Coalition, a “national phone tree” committed to mobilizing Americans to advocate for all our children’s health, a group committed to “people, not profits.”

This Coalition, which has more than 10 million monthly online visits, seemed both aligned to HHS Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and also, according to its website, dedicated to a larger, more inclusive vision: of comprehensive and, wherever possible, non-pharmacalogical approaches to self-care and mutual help; rigorous environmental clean up; the healthcare needs of all of us, including poor and marginalized people; and the power and decision-making authority of all Americans.

Their positions and programs were very similar to the ones which I had been writing about, developing, and advocating for 50 years, to the kinds of change desired by the 95 million adults who National Institutes of Health (NIH) has estimated are using non-reimbursible alternative and complementary forms of healthcare.

When these moms came out publicly against President Donald Trump’s February 18, 2026 Executive Order facilitating the manufacture of glyphosate, the carcinogenic weed-killer, to which RFK Jr., who had previously sued its manufacturer, meekly acquiesced, I was impressed. When, after MAHA Mom leaders were black-balled from Administration meetings and they doubled-down on their principled resistance, the deal was sealed. I had to know more about them.

The differences between us seemed, at least superficially, great. Still, we had so much in common. I wanted to find out who these women were, and if there was a way I could work with them, and also engage others who wanted similar change, but were uneasy about a number of Secretary Kennedy’s policies.

It turned out they were Orange County healthcare providers who identified and advocated as mothers. They had met at the MAHA Ball celebration during Trump’s Inaugural, and they seemed, like Kennedy, skeptical of government engagement in health.

I’m a dad, to be sure, but more visibly, a Washington, D.C., psychiatrist who was for many years a researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health. I was chosen by a Democratic President and Senator to be Chair of an NIH advisory council, and a White House Commission.

And yet, like me, they were clearly committed to challenging the medical establishment’s too narrow view of health and healing, as well as, when it threatened their core values, the Trump Administration. They wanted to explore preventive, non-pharmacalogical interventions prior to prescribing side-effect burdened drugs, and they, like RFK Jr., had singled out, as I and other concerned psychiatrists and psychologists often had: the promiscuous prescribing of antidepressants to children.

They advocated strenuously for midwifery and extended maternal leaves and ongoing services for new families, including a commitment to “Addressing the Abysmal Risk of Increased Deaths in Black Mothers in our Country.” And they stated publicly the need to “prioritize personal development and critical thinking,” a perspective congenial to me and to all the physicians I knew, that certainly seemed to deviate from Trump administration orthodoxy.

In short, they were reaching out to anyone who felt or recognized the shortcomings of our healthcare system. And they were creating and leading the kind of grassroots, mass-movement that could appeal to people across the political spectrum.

The MAHA Moms Coalition didn’t advocate for a single-payer system, as did Physicians National Health Plan, but they provided the patient-first content that PNP omitted, and seemed to have a far broader appeal. They were far more inclusive than the various holistic, integrative, and wellness groups of which I was aware, and they were grounded in the needs, hopes, and support of America’s mothers and their families, rather than purely professional perspectives. Also, and important, they were already bringing their perspective and the force of their community to administration discussions.

When I reached out, the MAHA Mom Coalition Leadership responded graciously, eager to share their perspective and plans and to hear mine.

One of the founders, Lindsey Meehleis, a certified professional midwife with 20 years of experience, reminded me, as I had learned 40 years ago, that for low-risk deliveries, midwives had consistently fewer complications and greater patient satisfaction than OBGYNs. She spoke passionately about birth as a “profound right of passage,” and advocated for the long-term family support that is routine in many European countries but almost completely absent here in the U.S.

Eden James, another founder, had become a “vaccine skeptic” not, she told me emphatically, “an anti-vaxxer,” 30 years before, when her infant son went into life-threatening anaphylactic shot after a Measles, Mumps, and Rubella vaccine. She devoted herself to using non-pharmacalogical means — diet, acupuncture, touch, herbs, etc. — to help her son recover from the asthma, allergies, a digestive disorder, and the emotional distress which followed, and she began to explore the pros and cons of vaccination. In time, Eden turned her tireless analytic and advocacy efforts to eliminating the pesticides and herbicides that contaminate our environment and threaten all our health.

Kathryn Allen, a longtime Coalition advisor, has a Master’s degree in public health, and has collaborated with major health centers on developing programs for older people and those with chronic conditions that combine yoga, nutrition, and the kind of evidence-based, mind-body approaches, like focusing on the breath and mindful eating, that I’ve been teaching for 50 years, that the American public is embracing in ever increasing numbers. Kathryn is committed to creating and studying community-based models of integrative care in her own county, and to encouraging others across the country to do the same.

As our discussions deepened, I had questions about the Coalition’s failure to bring a more nuanced critique to Kennedy’s vaccine plans, or to address the draconian cuts to SNAP. More recently, I was troubled that some of their social media posts — like an alarmist announcement without context or statistics, of vaccine side effects — didn’t show the same level of critical discrimination as their website and their public statements.

Still, the leaders were more than willing to hear my concerns and agreed that more attention needed to be paid to defining and refining their public messaging. And I felt comfortable strategizing with a Coalition that was doing what just about no one else was, creating a grassroots movement for a more sane, humane, effective approach to health, in which all Americans would take an informed and active role in their own care. They had repeatedly proclaimed themselves non-partisan — “MAHA is not MAGA”— and it seemed to me that they could be a catalyst for a much larger bi-partisan platform. I wanted, if they were willing, to help them rise to the occasion.

Then, this May, The New York Times published two Opinion pieces — one, a quite long Discussion among Opinion columnist and sociologist, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Opinion science writer, David Wallace-Wells, and Opinion science editor, Alexandra Sifferlin, and the other, a solo article by Cottom. I was initially pleased to see coverage, and then angry. In the “Discussion,” Cottom referred to the MAHA Moms as “drawing heavily on ecofascism.” In her solo column a few days later, she doubled down: the “thing holding The Coalition together is a baseline ecofascist motherhood politics.”

I was outraged. How could a columnist, especially in a piece questioning MAHA Moms’ evidence base, make this ecofascist accusation (which, not unimportantly, evokes Nazi blood and soil nationalism) without either a definition or a shred of evidence. And why did the other panelists seem to agree?

I also felt betrayed. I’ve been reading and generally respecting and trusting The Times since I was a kid, growing up in Manhattan. And, over the years, The Times has published my articles, reviews, and letters. I wrote a Letter to The Times, which shared my concerns. The Times chose not to print it.

When I shared these Opinion pieces with the MAHA Mom Coalition leaders, they were unsurprised. It was the kind of treatment they’d come to expect from The Times and other mainstream media.

I, on the other hand, remained troubled by The Times’ accusations, but also energized. The Opinion section’s self-satisfied, ignorant statements seemed to me symptomatic of what many Americans experience as elitist arrogance. They seemed, even more ominously, symptomatic of a divisiveness which is promoted across the political spectrum, of a refusal to understand “the other,” of the kind of ill-informed, conflict-promoting accusations which obscure the shared needs and hopes of most Americans — about much in addition to healthcare.

I’m looking forward to continuing to work with the MAHA Moms on the platform of care, research, and education they will develop, and to tuning in and cheering them on as they extend their national phone tree to people all across the political spectrum. It’s time for all of us to work out our differences and to work together for the healthcare we all deserve.

I am also hoping that the MAHA Mom Coalition’s outreach, and the embracing compassion and caring that animates it, will help to heal the misunderstandings, fears, and divisions which may now well be our most unhealthy national malady.

James S. Gordon, a psychiatrist and the author, most recently, of Transforming Trauma: The Path to Hope and Healing, chaired The White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy under Presidents Clinton and G.W. Bush. 

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.