Trump administration secretly cuts $213 million in funding for teen pregnancy prevention programs
Apparently the Trump administration believes denying access to contraception is a suitable form of sex education for teenagers.
Just in case you were wondering, the Trump administration has zero plans to support programs that help teens make healthy choices and not get pregnant. It’s already clear that Trump and his Republican buddies are doing everything humanly possible to deny access to abortions and contraception to women around the country—and in Texas, this has caused the abortion rate among teens to increase. But now, in sinking to a new and despicable low, they’ve gone and cut $213.6 million from teen pregnancy prevention programs and research.
The Trump administration has quietly axed $213.6 million in teen pregnancy prevention programs and research at more than 80 institutions around the country, including Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles and Johns Hopkins University.The decision by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will end five-year grants awarded by the Obama administration that were designed to find scientifically valid ways to help teenagers make healthy decisions that avoid unwanted pregnancies.
This is the act of a bunch of vulgar morons with retrograde views.Thanks to them, abstinence-only education is now official U.S. government policy. Folks, we have officially regressed back to 1957.
Among the programs that lost their funding: the Choctaw Nation’s efforts to combat teen pregnancy in Oklahoma, Johns Hopkins’ work with adolescent Apaches in Arizona, the University of Texas’ guidance for youth in foster care, the Chicago Department of Public Health’s counseling and testing for sexually transmitted infections and the University of Southern California’s workshops for teaching parents how to talk to middle school kids about delaying sexual activity.
The sneakiest part of all this? Some of the grantees, many of whom were just a few years into five-year funding contracts, didn’t even know their funding was being cut until they were contacted by the media.
Some grant holders were unaware that their final two years of funding was eliminated until they were contacted by Reveal this week. They had thought the letters were a routine authorization of 2017-18 funds and hadn’t noticed the line saying it was the final year of funding.
They cut access to programs which provided sex education, family values education, and contraception to teenagers—none of which provided abortion counseling. The teen pregnancy rate has gone down nationwide but is still relatively high among teenagers in disadvantaged and minority communities. This will only ensure that the rate of unwanted teen pregnancies and abortions will skyrocket. Way to make America’s teens great again, gentlemen! This is truly repugnant.
Is that an individual and parental responsibility or is it the responsibility of every taxpayer to provide that for someone else's child, perhaps in direct contrast to their particular beliefs?? Let's try to get our country off of the Socialist gravy train please. Your generation needs to learn to pay their own way rather than expecting others to do it for you.
I think the parenting in a 99% of success in this matter, but not a government matter at all