Trump team to stop family-planning funding as it reviews whether it's being used for DEI programs

Independent

25-03-2025

The Trump administration is planning to freeze tens of millions of dollars in federal grants to organizations providing family planning and other reproductive health services, as it reviews whether the funds violate the president's order to cease all government-backed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work.
A Health and Human Services spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal, which reported on the plan, that the department was reviewing grants to make sure they complied with the crackdown on DEI.
The freeze to the Title X program could impact as much as $120 million worth of grants to a network of roughly 4,000 clinics providing free and discounted pregnancy testing, contraception, sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing and treatment, and evaluations and testing for infertility.
Planned Parenthood, whose affiliates could lose roughly $20 million if the paused grants are ultimately cut, reacted with alarm.
'The Trump-Vance-Musk administration wants to shut down Planned Parenthood health centers by any means necessary, and they'll end people's access to birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, and more to do it,' Planned Parenthood Federation of America CEO Alex McGill Johnson told the newspaper.
Elsewhere, the administration is reportedly weighing cuts to the Centers for Disease Control's HIV-prevention program.
Trump has also resurrected federal rules barring funds from being spent on abortions in the U.S. and abroad, and has pardoned anti-abortion activists.
His nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration has called for a review of a rule that allowed patients to get an abortion pill without seeing a healthcare provider in person.
The president has said he wants policymaking around abortion to be handled by the states, rather than the federal government.
The White House emphasis on making deep cuts to federal spending has also impacted U.S.-backed health work abroad.
The attempted funding freeze to the U.S. Agency for International Development has been estimated to put contraception access in jeopardy for one million women a week.