On November 23, 1921 President Warren Gamaliel Harding signed the Sheppard-Towner maternity and Infancy Protection Act of 1921. It was ruled Unconstitutional in the US Supreme Court on May 15, 1922, it took until 1929 to completely defund it.
A bit of history on the Sheppard-towner Act came about by the following (in brief) Instrumental in passage of the federal grants to states for maternal and infant medical care to curb the maternal and infant mortality rate in the US. The people whom desired this to be passed were Julia Lathrop, Chief of the Childrens Bureau. Miss Lathrop learned of the plight of woman’s health and so forth from working in the slums of Chicago ( Notice the similiarities - another Community Organizer from Chicago).
The bill had the support of Progressives and the following organizations American Child Heygiene Association, National Conference of Catholic Charities, General federation of Womens Clubs, The National Women’s Christian Temeprance Union, The Continental Congress of the daughters of the American Revolution, the Women’s National republican Executive Committee and the National democratic Committee. It was opposed by the Medical reference Bureau, American Medical Liberty League, The American Medical Association. Warren G. Harding Republican campained on the this right for women., notice this was at the time of Womens Suffrage Movement and the Peak of Progressivism in the US.
In 1927, 45 States and the Territory of Hawaii accepte d the Provisions of the Bill - the holdouts were Massachusetts, Connecticut and Illinois.
The constitutionality of the Sheppard Towner Act was challenged in the courts in Massachusetts chiefly on the ground of federal invasion of the powers and rights of the states The AG of the state of Massachusetts in his brief before the Supreme Court in 1922 :
“so called “Federal Aid” legislation by Congress, by which appropriations are made by Congress for local and not national purposes, to States which accept the federal grants, has been found to be an effective way to induce States to yield a portion of their sovereign rights, that bills of a similar nature calling for expenditures of immense sums of money ... are now pending or proposed, and that unless checked by this Court on the ground of unconstitutionality no limit can be foreseen to the amounts which may thus be expended for matters of localo concern, resulting in the establishment of large federal bureaus with many officers for the performance of duties outside the purview of the Constitution.” (Brief for plaintiff, No 24 Commonewealth of Massachusetts, Supreme Court of the United States, October Term, 1922 You can read the information yourself The Sheppard-Towner Era: A Prototype case Study in the Federal - State Relationships by Edward R. Schlesinger
I am not making this up the Sheppard Towner Act for the Promotion of the Welfare of maternity and Infancy was in effect for the US from May 1922 to June 1929 when it was defunded grants in aid were 7 million for 45 states and the Territory of Hawaii, (Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Illinois refused the grants)
The Supreme Court actually rejected the challenge to Sheppard-Towner in Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447 (1923).