The White House on Tuesday said it had to extend federal family-planning grants to Planned Parenthood affiliates for a fifth and final year, citing legal difficulties with canceling the previously approved funding.
Still, pro-lifers called it a “slap in the face.”
A White House spokesperson said that the Title X Service Grant Awards, which are administered by the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Population Affairs, were already “locked in place during the Biden presidency.”
Recipients of the Biden-era five-year grants aimed at expanding access to “family planning and preventive health services” included a host of Planned Parenthood affiliates.
“The Administration faced significant legal challenges in stopping any of these dollars from going out,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement. “Title X funds cannot be used for abortions by law and, consistent with President Trump’s Executive Order on Enforcing the Hyde Amendment, the Administration remains committed to realigning the Title X program with the President’s pro-life and pro-family agenda going forward.”
He said the Title X grants for the next five-year funding cycle would reflect the administration’s commitment to defunding abortion providers.
“HHS will soon be releasing a new Title X funding opportunity for the next five-year funding cycle that prioritizes life and promotes the pro-family agenda,” said Mr. Dusai. “CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] continues to faithfully execute the One Big Beautiful Bill’s defunding of Planned Parenthood in Medicaid spending, and the Administration continues to scrap millions of taxpayer funding for the international abortion industry.”
For pro-life advocates, however, the decision to put up with another year of federal funding for Planned Parenthood represented the latest in a series of disappointments with the second Trump presidency.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, called the decision to unfreeze the funding “an inexplicable slap in the face to the pro-life GOP base.”
“This is a clear abandonment as the first Trump administration enacted the Protect Life Rule to stop Title X funding of Planned Parenthood,” she said in a statement. “It should have been ‘Day One’ policy in the second administration. Instead, we are 14 months in and this hasn’t been prevented.”
Pro-life activists have been dismayed by the administration’s foot-dragging on the promised Food and Drug Administration review of the abortion pill, as well as President Trump’s call for Republicans to be “flexible” on abortion-funding restrictions during the congressional healthcare debate in January.
“This spells disaster for November,” Ms. Dannenfelser warned. “SBA’s field team is in the top battlegrounds, working every day to communicate with voters unlikely to vote if they aren’t motivated. This undermines their work and amounts to political suicide. Enough is enough.”
The Title X program prohibits the grants from being used to pay for abortions, but pro-life groups argue that funding abortion providers helps keep them in business.
“Funding Planned Parenthood means propping up a business whose main purpose is to end the lives of innocent unborn children,” said Ms. Dannenfelser.
The American Civil Liberties Union dropped its lawsuit in January against the Trump administration after HHS agreed to unfreeze the Title X grant funding to healthcare providers, including nine Planned Parenthood affiliates.
