Freezing Planned Parenthood’s funding

Planned Parenthood is at risk of losing part of its federal funding—though perhaps not for the reason you might think. The Wall Street Journal has reported that the Trump administration plans to freeze a number of family planning grants—not because the recipients kill unborn children through abortion, but because the money might have been funding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Planned Parenthood is one recipient whose grant will be investigated. The proposed funding freeze amounts to 27.5 million taxpayer dollars, out of a total of about $120 million in family planning grants, the Wall Street Journal reports.

President and CEO of Planned Parenthood, Alexis McGill Johnson, is concerned that the freeze will “end people’s access to birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, and more.” And yet as Catholic University of America’s Dr. Michael New reported in 2023, “in 20 years the number of abortions performed by Planned Parenthood affiliates has increased by an astounding 75.6 percent,” while “during the same time period, prenatal services offered by Planned Parenthood affiliates have gone down by more than 60 percent.” Planned Parenthood isn’t worried about helping women be healthy. It’s worried about its bottom line. (Planned Parenthood has assets of over $2.7 billion.)

In November, Elon Musk proposed Planned Parenthood as one of the many organizations his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) would defund. Pro-lifers have been calling for Musk and President Trump to make good on that promise, though the DEI-prompted funding freeze is the first swipe the new administration has taken at the abortion-providing behemoth in its three-month tenure.

This not exactly what pro-lifers had in mind—at least not yet. Still, it’s a good sign that Planned Parenthood is in the sights of the Trump administration, and won’t get by scot-free. In a White House meeting on March 25, when asked about Planned Parenthood’s potential sale of aborted fetal body parts, President Trump said, “We will look into it.”

In the first Trump administration, Planned Parenthood was effectively defunded through a rule that disallowed facilities that provided or referred for abortion to receive taxpayer dollars. Planned Parenthood refused to comply with that rule, effectively disbarring themselves from federal family planning grant eligibility. The rule reportedly reduced the capacity of the Title X network by 46% nationwide. President Biden reversed it shortly after taking office in 2021. President Trump now has the opportunity to put the rule back into effect, redirecting taxpayer dollars to initiatives that don’t actively reduce the number of future American citizens.

Many Republicans were concerned when the Republican National Convention (RNC) watered down pro-life language in the Republican Party Platform ahead of the 2024 elections. Despite this, a number of pro-life measures have been taken by President Trump and his team in the early days of his second term. Vice President Vance chose the March for Life as his first public speaking appearance after taking office; President Trump pardoned 23 Americans who had been imprisoned under the Biden Department of Justice (DOJ) for peacefully protesting at abortion clinics; he reinstated the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits taxpayer funding for abortion abroad; he underscored enforcement for the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits direct federal funding for abortions in the United States; and he reinstated the United States into the Geneva Consensus Declaration, a coalition began by the first Trump Administration to protect nations’ national sovereignty in legislating on abortion. It’s not a bad start.

Still, there is room to improve upon this administration’s approach to federal funding for abortion. Instead of taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood, imagine taxpayer funding for Restorative Reproductive Medicine, which seeks to cure female infertility. Or taxpayer funded women’s health research, as proposed by Sens. James Lankford and Cindy Hyde-Smith in the RESTORE Act. Funding for such initiatives would align well with the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda, as well as President Trump’s call for policy recommendations to assist in expanding access to fertility—not by expanding access to expensive, arduous, and painful rounds of IVF, but by diagnosing and treating the underlying causes of infertility itself.

The potential funding freeze on Planned Parenthood is a hopeful sign that the Trump administration can be great for women’s health. Planned Parenthood staff kill unborn babies and harm women. While I’d hope the Trump Administration would pull their funding for the latter, I’ll take it for the former and hope for more.