WASHINGTON (ChurchMilitant.com) - The Trump administration is pulling over $200 million in taxpayer money from programs pushing abortion and contraception as a remedy for teen pregnancy.
Tom Price, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, made the move on July 14 to cut $213.6 million from 81 organizations that had been given five-year grants by the Obama administration.
The Trump administration is calling for the redirection the money plus nearly $50 million more towards abstinence and personal responsibility programs between 2018–2024.
Molly Smith, president of Cleveland Right to Life, comments, "It is certainly refreshing to see that the President and his administration are acknowledging this fact and are working with abstinence program organizations who have shown that these programs work." She continues, " Throwing contraception at young girls and telling them that as long as they are contracepting they can be sexually active verges on abuse."
In February 2016, President Obama cut federal funds from all abstinence-only programs, which had been receiving only $10 million per year.
Pro-abortion and pro-contraceptive progressive organizations like the Guttmacher Institute condemn abstinence programs as being ineffective, with Quartz magazine calling abstinence "the least effective contraceptive method known to humankind"
Yet, while abstinence-only programs have been phased out by the Obama administration and taxpayer money dumped into programs telling young people to use contraception, sexually transmitted diseases have skyrocketed among 15–19 year-olds.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has reportedthat "youth ages 15–24 make up just over one-quarter of the sexually active population, but account for half of the 20 million new sexually transmitted infections that occur in the United States each year."
It adds that of 820,000 new gonococcal infections in the United States every year, over 570,000 of them are among young people 15–24 year-old.
The CDC disagrees, however, that abstinence programs don't work. It notes that teen pregnancy decreased eight percent from 2014–2015, attributing it to a combination of both contraception and abstinence programs.
Smith adds, "The birth rate to unwed mothers has reached alarming proportions despite these young women having easy access to contraception."