(zeale) The Trump administration is extending Biden-era Title X family planning grants to Planned Parenthood for one final year due to legal challenges in halting the payments, the Daily Wire reported March 31.
White House spokesman Kush Desai told the outlet that the extension results from “significant legal challenges” the administration faced “in stopping any of these dollars from going out.”
Title X is a federal program that subsidizes family planning services for low-income individuals and includes a “broad range of services related to achieving pregnancy, preventing pregnancy, and assisting women, men, and couples with achieving their desired number and spacing of children,” according to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). While federal law prohibits using these funds for abortion, pro-lifers have argued that the program still helps subsidize abortion providers’ operations.
“This is the fifth and final year of Title X grants that were locked in place during the Biden presidency,” Desai said. “Title X funds cannot be used for abortions by law and, consistent with President Trump’s Executive Order on Enforcing the Hyde Amendment, the administration remains committed to realigning the Title X program with the president’s pro-life and pro-family agenda going forward.”
HHS plans to soon issue a new five-year Title X funding opportunity designed to “prioritize life and promote the administration’s pro-family agenda,” the Daily Wire reported.
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Desai also told the outlet that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is “faithfully execut[ing] the One Big Beautiful Bill’s defunding of Planned Parenthood in Medicaid spending, and the Administration continues to scrap millions of taxpayer funding for the international abortion industry.”
As Zeale News previously reported, the Trump administration in April 2025 froze the Biden-era grants to Planned Parenthood affiliates while reviewing whether recipients used taxpayer funds to support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. The move triggered lawsuits from Planned Parenthood and other allied groups, and the administration later restored the funds, drawing backlash from many pro-life commentators. Some pro-life advocates — including CatholicVote Director of Government Affairs Tom McClusky — said at the time that the administration faced a choice between restoring the funding and risking a court loss that could undermine broader efforts to defund Planned Parenthood.
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Pro-life leaders respond
Many pro-life leaders reacted sharply to the funding extension. According to the Daily Wire, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America, called it “an inexplicable slap in the face to the pro-life GOP base.” She noted that three-quarters of Republican voters support defunding Planned Parenthood.
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, also questioned the administration’s reasoning in an X post.
“If we are going to claim we must follow ‘the rules’ to fund abortion vendors, then we should also enforce the law that prohibits mailing Chemical Abortion Pills,” she wrote. “The Comstock Act is already federal law, and it makes it ILLEGAL to traffic dangerous abortion drugs by mail. That law is being ignored thousands of times every single day.”
She added that the Trump administration “doesn’t get to ignore federal law when it comes to the predatory abortion industry and then reward the same industry with more taxpayer dollars!”
Pro-life leaders have for months called on the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to reinstate safeguards against chemical abortion pills and remove them from mail distribution. Since the Biden administration lifted the in-person dispensing requirement for abortion pills in 2023, providers have been allowed to prescribe the deadly drugs via telemedicine and ship them by mail.
The pro-life movement also criticized the Trump administration when Trump suggested in January that lawmakers should be “flexible” on the Hyde Amendment, which protects taxpayer dollars from funding abortion in most cases.
Editor's note: This article was published by Zeale News and is reprinted with permission.
