Financing Family Planning Services: The Impact of Reducing or Eliminating Funding

The American Health Care Act recently passed by the House of Representatives includes a provision to ban federal Medicaid funding of Planned Parenthood. The Trump administration has also proposed reducing funding to HHS, which funds the Title X family planning program and community health centers.

A new brief from the Kaiser Family Foundation assesses the role of these programs in providing family planning care services to low-income women as well as the potential impact of eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood. If Planned Parenthood is excluded as a Medicaid provider, community health centers may not have the capacity to meet additional demands that would be placed on them to provide family planning services, the brief finds.

Several states have enacted laws to block state funding to Planned Parenthood under the Title X program.  Reducing or eliminating funding would disproportionately impact low-income women, who are more than eight times as likely as higher income women to seek family planning services at a safety-net clinic.