Go to Content Go to Navigation Go to Navigation Go to Site Search Homepage

Family planning and sex education works. Thanks to sex ed and access to reproductive health care, teen pregnancy is at a 40-year low. It’s no wonder that abortion rates are down, too. But that’s why it’s so maddening to see Republican leaders trying to dismantle all the gains that family planning and sex ed programs have made.

In the GOP budget introduced last week, anti-women’s health politicians in the U.S. House proposed to eradicate the successful, decades-old Title X program, which provides family planning services to millions of low-income women, men, and families per year.

20150616-Title-X-Data-1-FINAL.png

You’ll Never Guess Who Started the U.S. Family Planning Program

Richard Nixon (yep, Tricky Dick himself) signed the bill that made Title X law in 1970. Since then, the family planning program has been a key component of our nation’s health care safety net, as well as an essential element in reducing unintended pregnancies.

Today, Title X serves nearly 4.6 million low-income people at nearly 4,200 health centers every year. In every state, women and men rely on Title X for basic primary and preventive health care, including well-woman exams, lifesaving cancer screenings, contraception, and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections (STIs). In fact, 6 in 10 women who access care from a family planning health center consider it their main source of health care.

20150616-Title-X-Data-4-FINAL.png

So many people depend on Title X for good reason: It has great results.

  • Through birth control and contraceptive counseling, Title X has helped to prevent 1.1 million unintended pregnancies each year. That’s half of the 2.2 million unintended pregnancies that all public family planning programs help avoid.

  • Title X has a long-standing record of cost savings. For every public dollar invested in family planning, about $7.09 is saved in Medicaid-related costs.

20150616-Title-X-Data-2-FINAL.png

 

Whiplash: What Just Happened to Our Family Planning & Sex Ed?

It’s always been a fight to maintain and expand funding for family planning. In fact, we beat back serious efforts to significantly cripple the Title X program back in 2011. But four years after we stopped Congress, our opponents are at it again.

On June 16, 2015, anti-women’s health politicians introduced a bill that would eliminate the Title X family planning program that millions of people rely on.This bill could force Planned Parenthood health centers to shut down, and that means potentially leaving millions without access to the essential care that Planned Parenthood and other health centers provide every day.

But that’s not all. Just when teen birth and pregnancy rates have hit historic lows, the GOP proposal would also eliminate nearly all federal funding for an important source of evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention and sex education funding.

You thought the bad news was over. We’re just getting started: While slashing funding for sex education programs by over 90 percent, the GOP budget would also double abstinence-only programs.

20150616-Title-X-Sex-Ed-FINAL_1.png

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Sex ed works. Comprehensive sex education programs that are based on things like facts and evidence actually have measurable results for reducing unintended pregnancy and STI rates. Congress is irresponsibly giving millions of dollars to abstinence-only programs, despite the fact that they are ineffective and have been associated with higher rates of teen pregnancy. Not only that, but abstinence programs often exclude and shame LGBT youth — the exact opposite of what they need.

Title X: Just the Stats, Ma’am

To give you the impact of what this bill would do to just the millions of women, men and families who rely on Title X, consider these fast facts:

  • Title X health centers provided more than 1 million Pap tests and breast exams to 1.6 million women in 2013 alone.

  • Also in 2013, Title X provided 6.8 million tests for STIs, including nearly 1.2 million HIV tests. The Title X program also gives millions of people access to birth control

20150616-Title-X-Services-FINAL.png

What’s more, Planned Parenthood health centers provide preventive care to approximately 1.5 million women served by the Title X program — roughly one-third of the Title X program’s clients.

Impact: Women in Rural & Low-Income Communities Stand to Lose the Most

20150616-Title-X-Data-5-FINAL_1.png

Title X offers preventive health care services to those most in need. Ninety percent of Title X clients have incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level, and 63 percent are uninsured.

If this bill passes, it would have a devastating impact on women — especially women in rural communities and low-income women who rely on Planned Parenthood and other safety-net providers for affordable birth control, lifesaving cancer screenings, HIV testing, and other essential care that Planned Parenthood health centers provide every day.

Eliminating Title X is so beyond terrible that we know the impact will be massive, but we can only look to the states to see real examples of the type of pain it can cause. Here’s just one: Texas, 2011.

We can’t let that happen to the entire nation of low-income people who rely on Title X.

Act Now: Help Us Save Title X!

By defunding Title X, politicians are attacking Planned Parenthood. But it’s not just Planned Parenthood that’s under attack — it's the 1 in 5 women in America who has turned to Planned Parenthood health centers for care.

Tell Congress: I stand for health care. I stand with Planned Parenthood, no matter what.

Tags: Sex Ed, Congress, Title X

Is Abortion Still Legal in My State?

Learn about abortion access changes in your state.

Get the Facts

Tell Our Courts: Save Mifepristone!

We should be able to trust our courts to respect science and follow the law. It's time for our leaders to hear us, loud and clear: The attack on mifepristone is a gross injustice that could harm millions of people.

Speak Out Now

Planned Parenthood Action Fund Will NEVER Back Down

Know this: our right to abortion is not debatable. We will rebuild and reclaim the freedom that is ours.

Donate

Sign Up for Email

Sign Up

We and our third partners use cookies and other tools to collect, store, monitor, and analyze information about your interaction with our site to improve performance, analyze your use of our sites and assist in our marketing efforts. You may opt out of the use of these cookies and other tools at any time by visiting Cookie Settings. By clicking “Allow All Cookies” you consent to our collection and use of such data, and our Terms of Use. For more information, see our Privacy Notice.

Cookie Settings

We, and our third-party partners, use cookies, pixels, and other tracking technologies to collect, store, monitor, and process certain information about you when you access and use our services, read our emails, or otherwise engage with us. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences, or your device. We use that information to make the site work, analyze performance and traffic on our website, to provide a more personalized web experience, and assist in our marketing efforts. We also share information with our social media, advertising, and analytics partners. You can change your default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our Necessary Cookies as they are deployed to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information, please see our Privacy Notice.

Marketing

On

We use online advertising to promote our mission and help constituents find our services. Marketing pixels help us measure the success of our campaigns.

User Feedback and Session Replay

On

We use qualitative data from LogRocket, UserZoom, Hotjar and AB Tasty to learn about your user experience and improve our products and services. LogRocket allows us to view session replays.