Making health care, including family planning, more accessible and affordable is one of the most important issues facing our country. Planned Parenthood health centers are an integral part of America’s health care system and continue to play a vital role in serving the millions of Americans who need high-quality, affordable reproductive health care services, regardless of income or insurance status. In fact, many patients rely on Planned Parenthood health centers as their main source of health care.
Unfortunately, as the cost to provide care and the demand for services has increased, funding for family planning has remained woefully inadequate. At the same time, family planning programs have been subject to political attacks designed to undermine access to these important services.
Under the administration of Governor Christie, state family planning funding was cut from the budget every year. This resulted in a number of family planning medical providers - including many Planned Parenthood health centers - closing throughout the state of New Jersey. As a result of these closures, many New Jerseyans were left without care - and newly diagnosed cases of sexually transmitted infections (STI) skyrocketed.
At the federal level, the Trump-Pence administration issued a domestic gag rule that pushed abortion providers and clinicians which refer to abortion-providing practices out of the Title X program, the nation’s only program that is focused on providing a broad range of family planning services and information. Here in new Jersey, that meant that Planned Parenthood health centers and other independent family planning providers lost a total of $9.5 million in funding to provide family planning services to New Jerseyans with little to no income.
Since 2018, the administration of Governor Murphy has prioritized family planning funding. The first bill Governor Murphy signed into law after taking office was to restore state-level funding for family planning services. Following the changes to Title X that forced Planned Parenthood out of this federal program, Governor Murphy and reproductive freedom champions in the New Jersey legislature passed a supplemental funding bill into law that would provide state funding in place of the lost Title X funding. Today, many funding streams have been restored for New Jersey's family planning services - but access to care still remains out of reach for too many New Jerseyans.
Planned Parenthood is committed to ensuring that all New Jerseyans, regardless of income, have access to the critical reproductive health care they need, when they need it.
Learn more about funding streams for family planning and why Medicaid matters for patient health here.