Federal grant terminations are leaving thousands of young people without medically accurate information, lessons on consent and healthy relationships, and trusted adults to turn to for help.
Sunday, Oct. 11, marks International Day of the Girl: a reminder of how far girls’ rights have come and how much work remains to improve educational outcomes, end child marriage and protect girls’ health.
Across the United States, teen pregnancy rates have fallen to historic lows—the result of decades of investment in evidence-based prevention, improved access to information and sustained support for young people. That progress is worth celebrating, but the work is far from finished.
Yet the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently terminated 53 of the nation’s 67 teen pregnancy prevention grants, abruptly cutting off support for programs serving thousands of young people across the country. There was no wind-down or warning.
In New York alone, the cuts left 19,000 young people without services they had relied on, including 1,200 served by Children’s Aid in New York City. Their experience offers a glimpse of what these cuts mean nationwide: The grant terminations aren’t simply a funding cut—they represent a decision to walk away from proven strategies that improve young people’s health and well-being.
These programs are often described as efforts to prevent teen pregnancy, but that description understates what young people actually receive from them. They teach healthy relationships, consent, communication and decision-making. They help young people recognize abusive situations and connect with medically accurate information and trusted adults.
For many young people, those trusted relationships are just as important as the curriculum itself.
In my years of direct interaction with teens through pregnancy prevention programs, I have worked with young people who disclosed deeply personal experiences, including housing instability, the death of a parent or abusive relationships. Those conversations didn’t happen because we were looking for them. They happened because trusted relationships had already been built.
When a young person feels safe enough to ask for help, an educator can connect them with counseling, housing assistance, mental health services or other resources before a crisis escalates. Parents and caregivers gain tools to have difficult conversations with their children. School staff and community partners can become better equipped to recognize when a young person needs support.
Beyond the immediate lessons taught in these sessions, there was a much larger value that often went unseen: Young people were able to regularly interact with trusted adults who helped them troubleshoot other pressing challenges in their lives.
That is prevention in its broadest and most meaningful sense: Giving young people the knowledge, relationships and support they need before a problem becomes a crisis. It is especially important for young people with the fewest places to turn, including youth in foster care and in communities where access to healthcare remains uneven.
The consequences of eliminating these programs are about more than what happens in the classroom—they are about whether families have the information they need to support their children, and whether communities have the resources to intervene before challenges escalate.
Two months after HHS’ cut to these programs, there is now a glimmer of accountability. On Aug. 19, a federal judge blocked the administration from imposing requirements on the program that were not evidence informed. But that ruling did not restore the grants HHS terminated. For the young people who have already lost access to these programs, the funding is still gone.
The recent court ruling is an important step toward protecting evidence-based health education, but it does not undo the damage already done. The federal government must restore the funding it terminated. Every young person—regardless of where they live, their family’s income or the challenges they face—deserves access to trusted adults, medically accurate information and the support they need to build a healthy future. We should be investing in these tools, not taking them away.
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A note from Ms. editors: We want to hear from you for The Majority, a new campaign collecting stories about how reproductive freedom has enabled readers to build the lives they want and need.
Poll after poll shows a majority of Americans support reproductive healthcare access. Yet public debate overlooks the lives shaped by abortion access, contraception, IVF, miscarriage care, maternal healthcare or comprehensive sex education—countless women who chose to pursue an education, have children, not have children, protect their health and chart their own future. What’s your reproductive freedom story? Add your voice. Together, these stories will help show not only why reproductive freedom remains a majority value, but also what it makes possible.
