US Politics
Months after calling Trump the ‘most pro life president ever,’ the White House quietly released funds to Planned Parenthood
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The Trump administration has restored family planning grants to Planned Parenthood just months after the White House dubbed itself the “most pro-life administration” in U.S. history.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai told reporters on Tuesday that, though the administration wanted to withhold Title X family planning grants from Planned Parenthood, it couldn’t due to “significant legal challenges.”
In 2021, after former President Joe Biden took office, the Department of Health and Human Services authorized Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health organizations five-year Title X grants. The move was intended to address some of the Trump administration’s anti-abortion policies, according to the Washington Examiner.
As soon as Trump returned to office, his administration announced it would cancel the funding allocated to 22 organizations during Biden’s term. That move was challenged by reproductive rights advocates in court. The Trump administration ultimately released the funds to the grant recipients in December.
With that precedent set, the Trump administration decided on Wednesday to release the 2026 grant funds rather than again trying to withhold them.
When asked about the decision, Desai told the paper that the grant funding had been locked in place during Biden’s term but said that Trump planned on “realigning the Title X program with the President’s pro-life and pro-family agenda going forward.”
It’s unclear exactly how much Planned Parenthood and the other reproductive health organizations will be receiving from the 2026 allotment.
In 2026, Trump attempted to eliminate the entire $286 million appropriated for the Title X program, but the funding was ultimately included by Congress in this year’s funding bill.
Funds from Title X grants cannot be used to directly fund abortions, but anti-abortion advocates have argued that any dollar that goes to funding organizations like Planned Parenthood is ultimately supporting the practice.
Meanwhile, reproductive health advocates note that abortions are only one of numerous health services that organizations provide.
Conservative pro-life advocates are no less upset by the development, however.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America, posted a statement on X theorizing that the White House’s decision to release the grant funding was “political calculation — a deeply misguided one,” and characterized the move as 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,” Dannenfelser wrote. “It should have been ‘Day One’ policy in the second administration. Instead, we are 14 months in and this hasn’t been prevented.”
