What The Hell America!

The Administration is also demanding clinics hand over their names of their patients—including undocumented patients—within ten days.

On March 31, the Trump administration sent letters to Planned Parenthood affiliates and other reproductive health clinics in 20 states announcing a freeze of close to $35 million in federal Title X funding as of April 1. Title X is a federal program that provides affordable birth control, cancer screenings and other sexual and reproductive health care to low-income women. 

“President Trump and Elon Musk are pushing their dangerous political agenda, stripping health care access from people nationwide, and not giving a second thought to the devastation they will cause,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund. 

Since 1970, the Title X program has helped millions of women get reproductive healthcare. More than 300 Planned Parenthood health centers are in the Title X network—three-quarters of all Planned Parenthood affiliates. In 2023, there were more than 1.5 million visits to Title X-funded Planned Parenthood health centers. Overall in 2023, Planned Parenthood affiliate health centers provided over 400,000 cancer screening and prevention services, over 2 million birth control services, and over 5 million STI services.

“We know what happens when health care providers cannot use Title X funding: People across the country suffer, cancers go undetected, access to birth control is severely reduced, and the nation’s STI crisis worsens,” said McGill Johnson.

The right wing policy agenda Project 2025 recommends defunding Planned Parenthood and redirecting the Title X family planning program toward “fertility awareness-based methods and supplies,” which are notoriously unreliable. The first Trump administration funded anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers,” which provide inaccurate and misleading information about contraception and abortion.

As of April 1, the Trump administration has blocked Title X funding entirely in eight states: California, Hawaii, Maine, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee and Utah. He has denied most Title X funding to Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Alaska. Several other states will see some funding cuts, including Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

We know what happens when health care providers cannot use Title X funding: People across the country suffer, cancers go undetected, access to birth control is severely reduced, and the nation’s STI crisis worsens.

Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund

The Trump administration is cutting funding to clinics under the guise of targeting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives. For example, they cut funding to the only Title X grantee in Mississippi—Converge, Inc., which operates 90 clinics in the state as well as some clinics in Tennessee. In 2020, Converge issued a statement opposing racism in the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. The Trump administration is also targeting Essential Access, which operates clinics in California and Hawaii. Essential Access challenged the first Trump administration’s “domestic gag rule” to eliminate Title X funding.

The administration claims they are withholding funds temporarily, and are demanding the clinics hand over their names of their patients, including undocumented patients, within ten days.

More Extreme Than Trump’s 2019 Domestic Gag Rule

During his first administration, Trump imposed a domestic gag rule, blocking Title X funding for reproductive health clinics if they refused to stop referring patients for abortion. He then redirected those funds toward anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers.” The current action appears to be even more extreme: a blanket refusal to fund contraception, testing for sexually transmitted diseases and cancer screening services. 

The Trump gag rule, imposed in September 2019, had a devastating effect on patients, slashing the Title X-funded healthcare network’s capacity by nearly half. The action compromised the healthcare of millions of patients nationwide—disproportionately women of color, young women and low-income women—who rely on Title X health centers for reproductive healthcare.  

After the Trump gag rule went into effect, the number of clients served by the Title X program dropped 61 percent, from approximately 4 million in 2018 to 1.5 million in 2020. HHS’s Office of Population Affairs estimated 63 percent of the drop (1.5 million patients) was due to the Trump rule, while the other 37 percent was due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Instead of funding reproductive healthcare, the Trump administration encouraged participation by “nontraditional” organizations in Title X funding. The Trump administration granted $1.7 million in Title X funding in 2019 to Obria Medical Clinics, a Christian, antiabortion organization that opposes hormonal birth control and other contraceptives and offers training in the unreliable rhythm method.

After Biden was elected, HHS rescinded the gag rule on November 8, 2021. 

This time around, Trump had started the disinvestment in reproductive healthcare early in his presidency by directly targeting Planned Parenthood clinics and other disfavored providers. 

“Planned Parenthood Action Fund will fight to get this funding restored and to keep politicians out of health care,” said McGill Johnson. “People need affordable health care options. This cannot stand.”