Trump Cancels Teen Pregnancy Grants, Shifts to Abstinence

The Trump administration has canceled federal grants for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPPP), terminating 53 of 67 grants worth approximately $68 million and announcing that future efforts will focus on marriage and abstinence-based education. The decision, confirmed on July 22, 2026, represents a major shift in federal adolescent reproductive health policy and has triggered immediate layoffs, canceled programs, and widespread concern among public health experts.

According to NPR, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) informed grantees in late June that their funding was being terminated for “misalignment with agency priority, specifically normalizing sexual activity for minors.” The canceled grants, which had two years remaining on their five-year cycles, affected organizations in more than two dozen states, including universities, community organizations, state health departments, and Planned Parenthood affiliates.

Background: A Program Under Fire

The Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program was launched in 2010 under the HHS Office of Population Affairs, providing grants for evidence-based sex education programs designed to reduce teen pregnancy. The program had bipartisan support in Congress and trained more than 7,000 health professionals while supporting 3,000 community-based organizations since its inception.

This is not the first time the Trump administration has targeted the program. During the president’s first term in 2017, 81 grantees were notified of discontinuation. Internal HHS notes obtained by NBC News in 2018 revealed that political appointees with strict pro-abstinence beliefs — including Valerie Huber, former president of Ascend (an abstinence-until-marriage advocacy group) — drove the termination process over the objections of career experts. The funding was ultimately restored after grantees sued.

Immediate Impact on Communities

The sudden funding cuts have had devastating effects on organizations across the country. Rena Dixon, director of Fact Forward in Columbia, South Carolina, told The New York Times that her federal grant covered 80% of her organization’s pregnancy prevention project. Since receiving the termination letter, she has had to lay off half her staff and cancel training for local educators and teen summer activities.

In Wisconsin, the PATCH program (Providers and Teens Communicating for Health) lost $260,000 in federal funding. Amy Olejniczak, the program’s founder and executive director, told the Wisconsin Examiner via Postindustrial that the grant covered about 25% of the program’s annual budget. “We know that teen pregnancy prevention has been effective — a lot of the work that has been done over the past decade has improved outcomes,” she said. “So it’s really just devastating for public health overall. Our youth just got the message from their federal government that their health, well-being and transition to adulthood is not important.”

Ginger Mullaney, president and CEO of Healthy Futures of Texas, which lost a $2 million annual grant, expressed frustration over the loss of programs with proven effectiveness. “I’m frustrated that these are lives that were being changed,” she told NPR. “There’s generational impact and social and economic mobility for communities using programs that are proven and demonstrated to be effective.”

Voices from Affected Communities

Paige Preston, an 18-year-old from Tuba City, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation, attended a LiFT workshop — one of the evidence-based programs supported by federal grants — earlier this year. She told NPR she was “taken aback and just really shocked” when she learned the funding had been cut. Preston, who was set to volunteer at another workshop this summer, emphasized the importance of culturally relevant education. “When you participate and you learn from people like you, like in Indigenous communities, that means a lot more because it’s showing you that someone like you is so knowledgeable about a subject,” she said.

The Administration’s Rationale

President Trump’s 2027 budget calls for eliminating the TPPP entirely, arguing that the grants have gone to groups that “promote radical leftist ideology” and that there is “no evidence these programs have contributed to the historic decline in teen pregnancy, which is now at an all-time low.” Teen birth rates have indeed fallen 72% since 2007, but public health experts attribute this decline to evidence-based programming, improved access to health information, and sustained investment in adolescent health — the very programs now being defunded.

Nicholas Mark, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told NPR that the administration’s rationale is flawed. “In just a world where teens have smartphones — I mean, teens are surrounded by sex, and it seems silly to think that having a source of verifiable, trusted information on safe sex would be worse than the information environment that people are already steeped in.”

What’s Next

The cancellation raises significant questions about the future of adolescent reproductive health in the United States. Legal challenges are likely, mirroring the lawsuits filed during Trump’s first term that ultimately restored funding. Senate and House Democrats have already sent letters to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. demanding that the funding be reinstated.

For the affected communities, the immediate future is uncertain. Programs serving rural, Indigenous, and low-income communities — including the Navajo Nation, rural Wisconsin, and South Carolina — are among those losing funding. State and local governments may need to fill the funding gap, or programs serving hundreds of thousands of teens across the country may shut down entirely.

As the administration pivots toward marriage and abstinence-based education, the long-term impact on teen pregnancy rates — which have reached historic lows — remains to be seen. Public health experts warn that without evidence-based programming, the decades-long decline in teen pregnancies could reverse, particularly in the communities that need support the most.