Planned Parenthood sues HHS over Teen Pregnancy Prevention's abstinence-only funding requirements

By Samantha Kamman, Christian Post Reporter Friday, July 17, 2026

A coalition of local governments and organizations filed a lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration’s funding changes to the Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) program, objecting to the incorporation of abstinence-only education and the reported lack of focus on LGBT-identifying individuals. 

The suit, filed earlier this week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, argues that the adolescents “the Program is designed to help will suffer as appropriated funds are redirected to programs that have not been proven to reduce teen pregnancy.”

Plaintiffs in the case include Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), Hennepin County, Minnesota, and King County, Washington. Democracy Forward, Public Citizen Litigation Group, and Dunn Isaacson Rhee LLP represent SIECUS, Hennepin County, and King County. Planned Parenthood Federation of America represents Planned Parenthood of the Heartland. 

The TPP program is a federal grant initiative Congress first authorized and funded in 2009 to lower teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection rates.

In June, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) terminated 53 current TPPP grants and diverted $68 million in funds into new funding announcements. 

The lawsuit filed by the coalition claims that the HHS “issued new fiscal year 2026 NOFOs that condition TPP funding on incorporating abstinence-only 'sexual risk avoidance' education; require awardees to 'align' with agency priorities that prohibit ‘gender ideology' and diversity, equity, and inclusion practices; and restrict discussion of teen sexual activity in a program whose statutory mandate is to reduce teen pregnancy through ‘medically accurate' and ‘age appropriate’ interventions.” 

According to the suit, the defendants “relied on factors inconsistent with the statutory criteria, failed to consider important aspects of the problem of reducing teen pregnancy, and changed course without regard for the substantial reliance interests of awardees, program beneficiaries, and the broader public.”

The plaintiffs claim in their suit that the TPP program “has successfully reduced teen pregnancy for more than fifteen years.”

HHS did not immediately respond to The Christian Post’s request for comment. This article will be updated if a response is received. 

In a statement to CP, Michael New, a senior associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, asserted that the TPP program had little, if anything, to do with the decline in teen pregnancy rates. 

The pro-life scholar noted that data from Planned Parenthood’s former research arm, the Guttmacher Institute, shows that the decline in teen pregnancy rates began in the 1990s, not 2009. 

“A key factor in the decline in the teen pregnancy rate is the slow but steady decline in the fraction of teenagers who are sexually active,” New told CP. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) from 2023, 32% of high schoolers said they’ve ever had sexual intercourse — a drop from 54% in 1991 and 47% in 2013. 

In 2023, the CDC released updated data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). The survey found that between 2002 and the period from 2015 to 2019, the percentage of teen boys (15-19) who had ever had sexual intercourse fell from 45.7% to 38.7%.

During that same time period, the percentage of teen girls (15-19) who had ever had sexual intercourse fell from 45.5% to 40.5%.

“HHS’s own analysis of TPPP in the early 2010s found a very small percentage of funded programs succeeded in reducing teen pregnancy rates,” New stated.

“In the first Trump administration, there was an effort to reform TPPP and give funds to teen pregnancy prevention programs that emphasized abstinence over contraception. These efforts were largely unsuccessful because the TPPP grantees successfully litigated,” the pro-life scholar continued.

“Hopefully, the Trump administration will be more effective at reforming TPPP this time around,” he added.