The Department of Health and Human Services has terminated 53 of 67 grants under the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, eliminating roughly $68 million in funding for programs that served young people in more than two dozen states.
The cancellations, which took effect immediately upon notification, have drawn sharp criticism from reproductive health advocates who argue the administration is trading evidence-based prevention for ideology — and that the result will be more teenage pregnancies.
The Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, housed within HHS’ Office of Population Affairs, has long provided federal funding to universities, community organizations, city and state health departments, and Planned Parenthood affiliates to reduce unintended pregnancies among adolescents.
The canceled grants, which included awards in Arizona, Montana, Michigan, Texas and West Virginia, were terminated two years before their scheduled expiration.
Grantees who received termination notices were told their programs did not align with agency priorities. One organization, AccessMatters in Philadelphia, was informed that its $1.2 million grant was being cut because its program “normalizes or promotes sexual activity for minors”.
The action follows a party-line House Appropriations Committee vote where Republicans advanced a 2027 spending bill that eliminates the Title X family planning program and the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, increases abstinence-only funding, and maintains the Hyde Amendment—a move critics say is cruelly out of step with the more than 90% of Americans who support contraceptive access.
The organization’s Adolescent Health Initiative, which serves more than 1,100 teens between the ages of 13 and 19, was entirely funded by the federal grant and provided free sexual and reproductive health education, information, and referrals.
“This is devastating for the youth that we serve,” said Ayana Bradshaw, president and CEO of AccessMatters. “It also impacts us as an organization, our staff, and it impacts the partners that we had who supported us in implementing this program”.
The administration has simultaneously released two new grant opportunities totaling $71.7 million, with applications due July 23.
One notice states the goal is to identify “effective interventions focused on body literacy and ensuring transparency and protection of parental rights” — language that echoes earlier HHS guidance requiring grantees to avoid programming that promotes more than two genders or challenges parents’ religious views.
A footnote in the new documents specifies that “sex data collected under this NOFO refers to biological sex, male or female”.
Rachel Fey, interim co-CEO and vice president of policy and strategic partnerships at Power to Decide, criticized the cuts as a fundamental misdirection of the program’s purpose.
“There is a long history of the Trump Administration attempting to destroy the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program,” Fey said. “Now they are at it again, reaching into the pockets of communities around the country and stripping away a source of high-quality, evidence-based sexual health education—and in doing so, harming the pipeline for growing our knowledge about what programs work best to help young people.”
“To attempt to remake it into a funding stream for conservative ideology not only flies in the face of the congressional appropriators and the purpose of the program but also denies young people the high-quality sexual health education they need and deserve,” Fey said.
“The Epstein files have exposed not just a sex trafficking scandal but a centuries-old American pattern of selective outrage and incomplete accountability, revealing that while political energy is consumed by attacks on comprehensive sex education—one of the most effective tools for preventing exploitation,” said New Jersey women’s rights advocate Lisa McCormick. “Republicans are wildly out of step with public opinion and harmful to millions who depend on federal family planning services—the very systems meant to protect young people continue to fail those with the least power.”
“The Trump administration’s cancellation of 53 teen pregnancy prevention grants and its continued failure to fully release the Jeffrey Epstein files are not isolated incidents; they are two sides of the same coin, revealing a consistent and troubling pattern,” said McCormick. “An administration that actively dismantles the very tools designed to protect young people from exploitation while simultaneously obstructing transparency in one of the most significant sex trafficking cases in modern history.”
The administration identified the teen pregnancy program for elimination in its 2025 budget request, and the cuts were included in the final 2026 appropriations bill.
The accompanying legislative language stipulated that sexual risk avoidance grants must use medically accurate information and teach youth about risky behaviors “without normalizing teen sexual activity”.
This is not the first time the administration has moved to curtail the program.
During the first Trump administration in 2017, HHS terminated grants for more than 80 recipients two years early. Legal advocacy organization Democracy Forward sued on behalf of several grantees and secured a permanent injunction after courts ruled the action violated agency regulations.
Tara Mancini, director of public policy at Power to Decide, said she expects the current decision to be challenged in court as well.
The timing of the cuts has alarmed public health experts, who note that teen birth rates have fallen dramatically over the past two decades — about 72% since 2007, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers attribute that decline to fewer teens deciding to have sex at earlier ages, comprehensive sex education and improved access to contraception, particularly for girls.
Critics argue that by defunding proven prevention programs and redirecting resources toward abstinence-focused initiatives, the administration is effectively dismantling the infrastructure that produced those gains.
“The strategy of running moderates — we’ve lost the House, the Senate and the executive office,” said one progressive leader, reflecting broader frustration within the party. “Using the old playbook and looking at the results, I would hope that the course correction is to run some different plays.”
The administration’s broader reproductive health agenda has also drawn legal challenges. Last year, a federal judge blocked HHS guidance that required TPPP grantees to comply with executive orders targeting “gender ideology”. In that policy, the administration objected to teaching that promotes same-sex marriage and that “normalizes, or promotes sexual activity for minors”. Three Planned Parenthood affiliates sued and won a ruling vacating the guidance.
Separate litigation has been filed over similar requirements applied to the Personal Responsibility Education Program and the Title V Sexual Risk Avoidance Education program. And last week, a national family planning organization filed a lawsuit challenging the administration’s new Title X grant requirements, arguing they violate congressional intent and administrative procedure.
For now, organizations like AccessMatters are left to reckon with the sudden loss of funding that sustained their work with thousands of young people. Bradshaw said the grant termination was effective the same day the notice arrived.
“This is devastating,” she said.
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