Planned Parenthood affiliates sue HHS over teen pregnancy prevention funds

Five Planned Parenthood affiliates are suing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. over a recent order to comply with President Trump’s executive orders regarding biological sex, education, and racial discrimination.

Failure to comply will result in termination of government funding through the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPP). The impacted affiliates encompass more than 10 states which are seeking a preliminary and a permanent injunction against the new TPP Program funding requirements.

Planned Parenthood also sued the Trump administration in 2018, when the TPP Program was defunded. An unidentified HHS spokeswoman stated at the time, “Teen birth rates have been declining since 1992 and less than 1 percent of the teen population has been served by TPP. Of the 37 projects funded and evaluated for a 2016 report, 73 percent had no impact or had a negative impact on teen behavior” (emphasis added).

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• A number of Planned Parenthood affiliates have been ordered to come into compliance with five of President Trump’s Executive Orders (EOs) in order to keep taxpayer funding through the TPP Program. They are suing HHS and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

• These EOs appear to be focused on protecting minors from transgender ideology and ending discrimination, including policies that align with DEI initiatives.

• Planned Parenthood’s kind of sex education promotes promiscuity and earlier sexual activity, which has in the past shown the opposite intended effect on pregnancy prevention.

• The affiliates stand to lose a little more than $4 million total.

THE CONTEXT:

There is a lot of money at stake for Planned Parenthood. The lawsuit states that the government has invested over $100M annually since the inception of the TPP Program in 2010. The OPA website shows that Planned Parenthood affiliates receiving grants under TPP annually receive a total of more than $5.1 million, not including funding received from partnerships with other organizations.

Below is a breakdown of the funding received annually by the Planned Parenthood Plaintiff affiliates, according to the HHS website:

• Planned Parenthood of Greater New York: $1,091,185

• Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawai’i, Alaska, Indiana, and Kentucky: $487,013

• Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, Inc.: $773,619

• Planned Parenthood Central Coast: $798,640

• Planned Parenthood Mar Monte: $985,867

In addition, Planned Parenthood does not want to comply with Trump’s executive orders to affirm biological sex and keep radical indoctrination out of classrooms, instead preferring to promote LGBTQ ideology and promiscuity, grooming vulnerable children to become the corporation’s customers.

The lawsuit notes that several of the Planned Parenthood affiliates in the case advance the LGBTQ+ agenda with youth. Planned Parenthood of Greater New York, for instance, targets youth aged 10-24 with its “STAR” program as well as “youth who identify as LGBTQ+ [,] youth who are English language learners [,] and youth with intellectual and learning disabilities.” 

Planned Parenthood Gave Her Testosterone at 16 — Paid For With Your Tax Dollars

THE BACKSTORY:

As Live Action News previously reported, the TPP Program is the government-based sexual education program housed in the Office of Population Affairs (OPA) — a “national, evidence-based program that funds diverse organizations working to prevent teen pregnancy across the United States.”

But the TPP Program is not “diverse” in its sex education providers. The few openly-listed Planned Parenthood affiliates listed as grantees are partners or umbrella groups for dozens of sex ed programs which encourage promiscuous behavior and normalize the idea of changing genders instead of promoting sexual risk avoidance and abstinence.

As the lawsuit states, Planned Parenthood is one of several non-profit organizations in the FY Tier 1 Cohort, which the Biden-era HHS approved in June 2023 to “implement five-year projects serving communities and populations with the greatest unmet needs and highest existing adolescent health disparities” using millions of dollars in government grants.

As a participant in this Cohort, Planned Parenthood had to submit a non-compete application by April 15, 2025, to continue receiving funds for the project’s third year. On March 31, HHS emailed the “Guidance for Preparing a Non-Competing Continuation (NCC) Award Application” (NCC Notice), requiring grantees to “demonstrate alignment with current Presidential Executive Orders.” 

Planned Parenthood is ordered to comply with the following EOs to continue receiving TPP funds: 

• Executive Order 14168: “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”

• Executive Order 14190: “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling”  

• Executive Order 14187: “Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation”  

• Executive Order 14151: “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing”

• Executive Order 14173: “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity”

Planned Parenthood claims the NCC Notice sets forth a “substantial and onerous new requirement,” arguing that the requirements are “impossibly vague” and undermine the TPP Program’s requirements and aims.

“… To the extent they impose discernable standards at all, those standards would require funding recipients to violate the basic statutory requirements of the TPP program,” reads the lawsuit.

Planned Parenthood says the NCC notice did not outline what it would mean for the corporation to align with the EOs, adding that, as none of the EOs specified mention teen pregnancy and sex education, it shouldn’t have to comply.

Each of the listed Planned Parenthood affiliates stands to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars if it loses TPP funding.

REALITY CHECK:

Planned Parenthood claims to use evidence-based and effective education strategies in line with TPP Program requirements to reduce teen pregnancy rates, but Planned Parenthood “sex ed” programs encourage sexual behavior, which increases the risk of pregnancy.

The lawsuit lists some of Planned Parenthood’s curriculum programs, claiming the programs are necessary and effective, including Be Proud! Be Responsible!, Draw the Line, Making Proud Choices!, and Safer Choices. These programs contain explicit material, promoting risky sexual behavior to youth. 

Former Planned Parenthood sex educator Monica Cline wrote in a piece for the Washington Examiner that when she showed up to her job training, she believed she was there to encourage young people not to have sex — and found that the opposite was true.

Cline was instructed to assume that “everyone was doing it.” She was led to collaborate with a group of young people who were asked to label sexual activities and body parts with slang terms. Cline noted:

The terms are dehumanizing, and the activity serves to restructure their thoughts about their bodies, others’ bodies, and the act of sex.

Sexual intimacy is redefined from being special, for marriage or for having babies, to being crass, seeking pleasure over meaningful relationships, accepting STDs as a way of life, and terminating the lives of babies so we can worship our sexual rights without hindrance.

Planned Parenthood’s sex education is designed to omit parents from the equation, said Cline. “That is why they say, ‘Parents are a barrier to service.’ Organizations like Planned Parenthood do not aspire for more in our children’s lives. Their answer to happiness and empowerment is to have sex, use a condom, get tested, treated, and have an abortion.”

Cline’s remarks reinforce what Live Action exposed in its investigative series on Planned Parenthood’s sex education, which revealed that “[t]he motto at Planned Parenthood seems to be sex with no strings attached. Teens are told that they can have sex wherever, whenever, and with whomever — and anything goes, as long as it’s consensual and contracepted.”

Live Action News also noted that Planned Parenthood refuses to use an abstinence-only approach when teaching teenagers about pregnancy avoidance, openly mocking the commonsense, healthy, and guaranteed way to reduce prevent unwanted pregnancies.

According to Planned Parenthood, any sex education that promotes avoiding sex until marriage is “shaming” and doesn’t work. In its own words and in bold print, it says:

We have to fight against abstinence-only-until-marriage/SRA [sexual risk avoidance] programs and advocate for sex education laws and funding that support the full range of sex education topics that young people need and deserve.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

According to Planned Parenthood’s latest annual report, the corporation has reached a record high of 402,230 abortions in one year, suggesting that the millions of taxpayer dollars invested in Planned Parenthood’s sex education programs may be ineffective at reducing unintended pregnancies.

The consequences of living a lifestyle promoted by Planned Parenthood’s “sex education” are devastating – broken relationships, generations of people unable to understand and experience life-giving love and intimacy, and the loss of millions of preborn lives.