Trump Administration Cancels $66 Million in Teen Pregnancy Prevention Grants, Citing Misalignment with Agency Priorities

In late June, the federal Department of Health and Human Services canceled all but roughly a dozen Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program grants, terminating approximately $66 million in annual funding to organizations across the country. The five-year grants had two years remaining. A list of terminations obtained by NPR cited the reason as "misalignment with agency priority, specifically normalizing sexual activity for minors."

The cancellations came after grantees had already been required, beginning in July 2025, to revise their programs to comply with five executive orders — including requirements that materials "reflect the immutable biological reality of sex" and not promote what the administration described as "discriminatory equity ideology." Organizations that completed the revision process and received renewed approval were still subject to the June terminations. Healthy Futures of Texas, for example, adapted 11 separate programs over several months and received re-approval before its $2 million annual grant was canceled without warning, according to the organization's president and CEO, Ginger Mullaney. She said 13 employees are now losing their jobs.

The Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program was established by Congress in 2010 to fund approaches previously evaluated through randomized controlled trials. Nicholas Mark, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin Madison, described the program's design as intended to "put in place the programs that had been shown to be effective in reducing teen pregnancy, increasing healthy behaviors, decreasing unhealthy sexual behaviors among teens." Mark also described the agency's stated rationale — normalizing sexual activity among minors — as a "bizarre" framing, given the broader information environment teenagers already navigate.