In late June the Department of Health and Human Services canceled most Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program grants, cutting $66 million and leaving about a dozen grants in place.
A list of terminations showed the given reason was: "Misalignment with agency priority, specifically normalizing sexual activity for minors."
Last July the Trump administration issued a notice to grantees saying "Program materials are expected [to] reflect the immutable biological reality of sex, not radical gender ideology, and may not promote anti-American ideologies such as discriminatory equity ideology."">
"We had to essentially adapt and revise all of the already approved curricula to be in alignment with the executive orders — so that for us was 11 different programs that we adapted," said Ginger Mullaney, president and CEO of Healthy Futures of Texas, which had been re-awarded and deemed in compliance.
So two weeks ago the organization's $2 million annual grant was canceled effective immediately, Mullaney said; 13 employees are losing their jobs and the group may have to reduce services.
Grantees included public health departments, universities, Planned Parenthood and Bethany Christian Services affiliates, and the five-year awards had two years left to run.
President Trump's recent budget request called for eliminating the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program and said, "There is no evidence that these specific programs have contributed to this historic decline in teen pregnancy, which is now at an all-time low. Moreover, TPP issues grants to problematic organizations like abortion clinics that waste American taxpayer dollars on abortion services and promote radical leftist ideology," and the president also signed $101 million in funding for the program into law earlier this year; Senate and House Democrats sent letters to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last week demanding the funding be reinstated.
The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to multiple requests for comment about why the grants were canceled.
Paige Preston, 18, said a LiFT workshop run by Hózhǫ́ Horizons that was canceled after the funding cut "connects you with your trusted adult" and taught her about birth control options beyond condoms, such as the pill and IUDs.
Nicholas Mark, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin Madison, called the agency's rationale "bizarre," and said, "In a world where teens have smartphones, teens are surrounded by sex and such easy access to sex and sexual imagery, sexual iconography," adding, "It seems silly to think that having a source of verifiable, trusted information on safe sex would be worse than the information environment that people are already steeped in."