In Trump’s latest move to roll back reproductive care and education, the White House has cut Obama-era grants aimed to help reduce teen pregnancy.
“Last week, the Center for Investigative Reporting's Reveal broke the news that the Trump administration had "quietly axed" a hefty $213.6 million in grants for teen pregnancy prevention and research at dozens of institutions across the country. According to Reveal's investigation, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently sent letters to at least 81 programs and institutions announcing that the grant money they'd been promised for fiscal years 2015 through 2019 would cease halfway through the 2018 calendar year, much to the groups' surprise,” according to Forbes.
“The move to cut grants for teen pregnancy prevention programs, which could almost unavoidably cost taxpayers billions down the road, apparently preceded (or at least happened alongside) development and passage of a budget plan by the related House appropriations subcommittee, which seeks to cut spending on teen pregnancy prevention itself. An estimated one in four American women become pregnant during their teenage years, costing U.S. taxpayers at least $9 billion per year.
“As Reveal pointed out, HHS Secretary Tom Price and numerous other Trump-appointed members of the administration ‘are outspoken opponents of federal funding for birth control, advocating abstinence rather than contraceptives to control teen pregnancies.’ Under this administration, it added, the HHS' Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program ‘had two strikes against it: Former President Barack Obama started it, and social conservatives don’t want to give teens access to birth control.’”
The most important being that President Barack Obama started it.
By Janet Burns
