(LifeSiteNews) — “Sexual education” programs historically used by Planned Parenthood will continue to receive federal funding under the latest appropriation bill passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump.
As detailed by Live Action, a budget request submitted by the White House last May for the 2026 fiscal year had included a proposal to eliminate the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program, for which six entities affiliated with Planned Parenthood had received more than $5 million a year since 2023. However, a federal judge later sided with Planned Parenthood against another administration policy that would have also affected such programs by disqualifying health providers who maintained diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
Since then, Trump’s narrow Republican majority in Congress also faced weeks of difficulty in reaching a budget agreement to keep the federal government open, largely over disagreement about extending Obamacare subsidies and ensuring they could not be used for abortions. That government shutdown ended in November after 43 days, but the start of February brought with it another, more limited government shutdown, this time ignited by the national controversy over immigration enforcement in Minneapolis.
After the Senate managed to pass a funding deal, Trump urged the House of Representatives to “send it to my desk WITHOUT DELAY. There can be NO CHANGES at this time.” He signed it into law on February 3.
The final bill contains language preventing federal funds from being used for most abortions or for creating or destroying human embryos. However, it also contains $107.8 million for Teen Pregnancy Prevention Community Grants, $35 million for Sexual Risk Avoidance Education, $101 million for grants for “medically accurate and age appropriate programs that reduce teen pregnancy,” and $6.8 million for “longitudinal evaluations” of “teen pregnancy prevention strategies.”
“Additionally, under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), Congress reauthorized FY 2025 funding levels for the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP), which consists of sex education programs for populations deemed ‘high risk’ for STIs or teen pregnancies,” Live Action adds. “Often, state PREP programs use curricula promoted by the Future of Sex Ed (FoSE) Coalition, which includes Planned Parenthood.”
The Trump administration has taken numerous actions to keep federal tax dollars from being used directly for abortion. But until a complete and permanent disqualification of Planned Parenthood itself is on the books, the abortion giant will retain ways of getting its hands on taxpayer money for controversial non-abortion purposes.
Planned Parenthood is notorious for promoting ideas about underage “safe sex” which are anything but.
Examples include its chatbot app “Roo,” intended for teens as young as 13, which suggests there’s no right age to begin sexual activity and encourages birth control; PP sexual education executive Bill Taverner, who advocates teaching children about pornography; flyers distributed to middle schoolers telling kids they don’t need parents’ permission for abortion or birth control; obscene Facebook ads apparently targeted at teenage girls; and much, much more.
Pro-lifers warn that Planned Parenthood’s work on the subject actually increases unintended pregnancy by encouraging sexual “exploration” among minors rather than taking a firm line that sexuality should be delayed until marriage. This is believed to come partly out of the “progressive” movement’s far-left ideology and partly in order to generate more demand for Planned Parenthood’s “services.”
Former President Barack Obama was adamantly pro-abortion, but even a 2016 report from his Office of Adolescent Health found that, across six different Planned Parenthood affiliate partners, more than 3,500 students, and 87 schools, a Planned Parenthood-backed sex-ed program left students “significantly more likely than controls to have ever been pregnant or to have caused a pregnancy.”