A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed for reporters Tuesday that the department was reviewing grant recipients to ensure that they were in compliance with President Donald Trump’s day-one executive order scrubbing DEI from the federal government, including existing grants.
The freeze, reported by the Wall Street Journal, has not been made public yet, but, if implemented, it would mean suspending domestic funding for pregnancy testing, contraception disbursement, treatment of sexually transmitted infections, and infertility consultation for lower-income individuals.
HHS, headed by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., manages the Title X program and gives free or discounted services to about four million people each year through about 4,000 clinics across the country.
The $120 million on the chopping block is roughly half of the Title X budget for the year.
Neither the White House nor HHS responded to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
Should it be implemented, the freeze would withhold about $20 million in family planning funds from Planned Parenthood, achieving in part a long-term conservative goal of defunding the abortion provider.
Federal dollars are not allowed to be used for abortions. Anti-abortion advocates argue, though, that the money that goes from the federal government to Planned Parenthood for other services indirectly supports abortions because money is fungible.
Title X funds have long been a political football, particularly with the intensifying debate over abortion in the past decade.
The first Trump administration in 2019 attempted to prevent organizations from receiving federal family planning dollars if they referred patients for abortions, but the Biden administration rescinded that rule.
Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade federal abortion protections in 2022, the Biden administration attempted to withhold millions of dollars of federal funding for states with strict gestational age limits on abortions.
Oklahoma lost $4.5 million in Title X funding in 2023, and Tennessee lost $7 million, according to lawsuits against the Biden administration.
