Trump team to stop family-planning funding as it reviews whether it’s being used for DEI programs

[IwantToRetire]

The Trump administration is planning to freeze tens of millions of dollars in federal grants to organizations providing family planning and other reproductive health services, as it reviews whether the funds violate the president’s order to cease all government-backed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work.

A Health and Human Services spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal, which reported on the plan, that the department was reviewing grants to make sure they complied with the crackdown on DEI.

The freeze to the Title X program could impact as much as $120 million worth of grants to a network of roughly 4,000 clinics providing free and discounted pregnancy testing, contraception, sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing and treatment, and evaluations and testing for infertility.

Planned Parenthood, whose affiliates could lose roughly $20 million if the paused grants are ultimately cut, reacted with alarm.

“The Trump-Vance-Musk administration wants to shut down Planned Parenthood health centers by any means necessary, and they’ll end people’s access to birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, and more to do it,” Planned Parenthood Federation of America CEO Alex McGill Johnson told the newspaper.

https://www.aol.co.uk/trump-team-stop-family-planning-211853228.html

I did, it didn't answer the question. I was already aware of the approx 35k patients nationwide in the US that accessed hormones from PP. I was asking for evidence for the claim planned parenthood are sterilising children i.e. what evidence there is for the amount of children access hormones at PP.

And back to the culture war I see.

You seem only to be able to frame things as “right wing” or “left wing” which makes discussion very limited.

What is “right wing” about not wanting children or vulnerable young adults (see preponderance of neurodiversity amongst the trans-identifying cohort) to be prescribed drugs which will remove their future ability to have their own children?

That's a lot to post to answer that you don't know a number of children that were even patients let alone children sterilised. It's perfectly possible to say "I don't want PP to provide gender affirming care" without leaping to"this organisation sterilises children", just as anti choice campaigns could say they disagree with abortion without having to make up that PP is murdering babies for body parts.

Also, have you heard of Bill Cassidy before ?

I don't see everything in a left wing / right wing view, but it would be unfactual to say the attack on abortion rights isn't coming from the right wing. Why is that verboten to say..?

I didn't say it was right wing to be against gender affirming care. Smearing a key organisation for women's healthcare with the kind of unfactual scare tactics words that mimic the right wing attacks on their abortion services is an odd choice when you claim to be pro women's rights.

Would any number of children sterilised by puberty blockers/CSH be acceptable to you?
Is one too many? One hundred a price worth paying?

No-one was defending them having the same legal status, just pointing out that they do have the same legal status. Ie although abortion is basically illegal, it is allowed in defined circumstances, and so are many other medical procedures.

By all means try and make this into a discussion about the limits (if any) that should be placed on abortion, but perhaps start another thread.
But get it out of your head that people who are concerned about a service that was set up to provide contraception and abortion is now also prescribing cross-sex hormones with no proper clinical assessment, are somehow also against abortion and contraception.

It really is possible to be pro- women having control over their fertility AND at the same time, to be against prescription of cross-sex hormones to anyone who asks for them, given the long term damage they do.

We do not have to blindly adhere to a pre-packaged set of beliefs without being able to critically look at the differences between them, and decide to accept some and reject others. This critical thinking doesn’t make a person “right wing”.

If you thought this withdrawal of funding is as dangerous as you claim, im not convinced you'd be arguing the toss here with people who can't change anything.

You would be better contacting PP directly and helping them with funding strategies.

Do you have the numbers? It's so hard to source from anyone's claims here. Firstly we'd have to know how many of those 35k patients nationwide were even children and then know how many of them were "sterilised" and then we can have a proper conversation about that, except you don't have any of those facts. It's possible for you to argue against gender affirming care that PP are providing without the vilification of "PP sterilises children".

How many real women dying through lack of access to abortion is acceptable to you in order to protect the hypothetical children in your question? In many areas PP is the only place, and they're continually under attack. I noticed OP didn't include the rest of the article about how antichoice activists are being pardoned, highlighting again the huge pressure on abortion rights in the US. Does making unverified claims to further vilify PP hurt or harm women's access to abortion?

Given I haven't called anyone right wing (except the right wing anti choice lobbybgroups, politicians activists etc) why do you keep assuming I have?

I'd actually love to have a response with some critical thought of why some PP are happy for PP to be replaced with a other provider, state they aren't fit for purpose etc, at a time when they are the sole lifeline for women to access abortion and in a political climate making access to abortion a critical issue given no one here has any actual evidence for what they are as the bigger issue of children being sterilised. It's almost like you can apply critical thinking and despite your reservations to gender affirming care that PP are providing to a small proportion of their patients nationwide you recognise it's not furthering women's rights to vilify their only abortion provider.

PP and women in general should have seen this coming and made plans (ironically). But its not too late, american woman can either self fund this organisation, or build something new.

Its not exactly reinventing the wheel, is it?

Demanding numbers isnt going to move this forward. It doesn't matter how many girls and young women recieved testosterone, for Trump one is too many.

I thought the funding had only been temporarily halted until PP can show they’re complying with the DEI order. However, when looking for further information I found this article which I think is very concerning 😒

https://archive.ph/1ZsVw

'Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Planned Parenthood has enjoyed a fund-raising boom, with $498 million in donations that year. But little of it goes to the state affiliates to provide health care at clinics. Instead, under the national bylaws, the majority of the money is spent on the legal and political fight to maintain abortion rights.
Clinics are primarily funded by Medicaid payments for non-abortion procedures and donors who give directly to the affiliates.'

That's an interesting article, thanks for sharing.

Looks like the whole landscape is so utterly different from the UK, largely because healthcare is monetised. And politicised.

So true…Money talks.

Here's also useful info on abortion legality and bans across the US.

archive.ph/7Jt60

Abortion is completely banned in 12 states.

4 states with a 6 week limit.
2 states with a 12 week limit.
1 state with an 18 week limit.

The rest have laws comparable to the UK's, I reckon.

What’s with the “murdering babies” nonsense? Do you think we’re idiots?

Do you think PP should be able to provide puberty blockers to children?

Planned Parenthood is a dodgy organization, and given their attitude to giving these treatments to youth I am not sure why anyone would imagine their care of other kids is any better. I know a woman who had three abortions from PP, under 18, who was being prostituted by her "boyfriend" at the time. He took her over the state line to access the clinic.They didn't make any inquiries about her situation though they offered her contraception.

Frankly the idea they started as a woman-centered organization is pretty suspect as well, they started as a "social hygiene" organization.

Firstly, Mumsnet HR are fully aware of this by the way, they have access to the posting stats - that is a very serious accusation. I know I am a woman in the UK who posts genuinely so at least one strongly gender critical voice here does not fit your claim, and if I exist (which I do) and the gender critical feminist women I meet in real life exist (which they do) Occam's razor suggests the other women here are also who they claim.to be.

So if you have genuine evidence that your claim is broadly true I suggest you post it, otherwise you just look like someone desperate to delegitimise real women's voices in favour of your ideological theories.

Secondly, even if your claim was true, why oh why oh why oh why have the organisations who are supposed to support women (in the original sex based meaning, these being the people who have historically been marginalised because of the sex of the bodies and the only group of people who face the consequences of the female reproductive role) made it so easy for these supposed malignant actors to do this by chaining the rights and needs of women (in the original sex based meaning) so tightly to the totally unrelated rights and needs of trans identifying people that it becomes impossible to support women's sex based needs without legitimising the sexist belief of gender identity?

I mean, even if you agree wholeheartedly with the political position of both groups there's still no need to shackle them two very different causes together into the same cause.

At best it results in lack of focus, conflicted messaging and unclear priorities. At worst, as you point out, it makes each cause vulnerable to entirely unrelated political action against the other.

I consider it an abject failure that the groups that are supposed to support women (in the original sex based meaning) with the challenges we face from being women (in the original sex based meaning) have so fundamentally compromised their core purpose and in doing so sacrificed their ability to support women when it really matters.

This was their choice not ours.

I hope you are feeling calmer and clearer today. If you read your original post it says that the funding is temporarily suspended while a review checks that the organisation is not using that money to medically harm vulnerable children and young adults.

I hope you can see that that is a good thing?

Trump is awful in many ways but he is making good decisions on this topic.

I agree. It is anti-feminist and totally irresponsible to support cuts to women's sexual health services. Trump's trampling of DEI reverses everything that feminists fought for.

TWANW and I understand that the POTUS is addressing this problem. I'm suspicious of any "feminist" who supports the dismantling of women's rights.

Are you aware of what happened to a child’s body when given puberty blockers or to girls when given testosterone? It causes serious and mostly irreversible harm.

In case you missed it as well, Planned Parenthood are causing serious harm to many. From the article on page 1

“Planned Parenthood was founded a century ago to promote birth control. Today, its nearly 600 clinics nationwide make it the largest single provider of abortion, contraception, reproductive care, and sex education in the U.S.
It has also, in less than a decade, become the country’s leading provider of gender transition hormones for young adults, according to insurance claim data. In 2015, around two dozen of their clinics began offering this service. Now it’s available at nearly 450 locations.”

An organisation set up to do good has totally lost its way and it is likely to be best to shut it down and replace it with a new organisation with sane leaders and employees that aren’t out to cause serious harm to so many kids.

Yes, leveraging this attack on PP to vilify gender critical women in the UK for not accepting the sexist precepts of gender identity instead of recognising how fucking stupid it was for a group that is under constant attack by right wing groups who want to deligitimise abortion to open themselves up to an attack because of activity that is unrelated to their core mission does indeed come across as it being more important to you to smear UK feminists as right wing than protect women's reproductive freedoms. HTH.

"The Trump administration is planning to freeze tens of millions of dollars in federal grants to organizations providing family planning and other reproductive health services, as it reviews whether the funds violate the president’s order to cease all government-backed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work."

A shame that America hasn't yet got the hang of class based analysis, so won't notice who this affects.