Lawmakers press HHS on $100 million in unspent teen pregnancy funds

Judge ruled HHS abstinence-only policy was arbitrary and capricious

Ninety-two lawmakers in the House and Senate urged the Department of Health and Human Services on Friday to release roughly $100 million in congressionally appropriated teen pregnancy prevention funding that remains unspent less than a week before the end of fiscal year 2026.

According to the lawmakers’ letter, which was shared exclusively with NPR, HHS has spent only about $500,000 of the $101 million it is obligated to give out in grants to organizations that work with teens. The letter was organized by the Democratic Women’s Caucus.

“Withholding these funds deprives teens across the U.S. of vital resources and threatens to unwind decades of progress made in reducing teen pregnancy,” the letter reads.

The Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program was established by Congress in 2010 and has long been a target of the Trump administration and some conservative groups, including the Heritage Foundation. President Trump’s fiscal year 2027 budget request calls for eliminating the program, labeling it “leftist and ineffective,” and Trump tried to cut the grants during his first term. Trump also signed a budget bill into law in February that specifically allocated $101 million to the program.

Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., the lead author on Friday’s letter, said HHS is obligated to spend the money as Congress directed. “HHS is obligated to spend this money as directed by Congress,” Chu said. “This is a bipartisan program created by Congress with the clear intent of supporting evidence-based education models that help reduce teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and other health risks for young people.”

Chu said the Trump administration appeared to be steering the funds toward abstinence-only sex education. In June, HHS abruptly cut off grants to dozens of nonprofits, universities and health departments. According to the lawmakers’ letter, most of those organizations were in the third year of a five-year funding cycle. Soon after, the agency issued a new funding opportunity promoting abstinence-only sex education, a shift Chu called inconsistent with congressional intent. “This does not fulfill what Congress had appropriated and what its guidelines were,” Chu said.

In August, Judge Christopher Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that HHS cannot use the new requirements, though the agency could reinstate the grants on its own or be forced to do so by a federal lawsuit challenging the terminations. “The TPP Program now mandates an abstinence-only approach to pregnancy prevention, promotes the nebulous concept of ‘body literacy,’ and prohibits the ‘normalization’ of sexual activity among minors,” Cooper wrote. “That new policy is likely arbitrary and capricious.” Cooper also flagged that the HHS funding notice included citations for research papers that do not exist. The law allocating the funds requires programs to be evidence-based. Cooper’s decision on whether to reinstate the terminated grants is expected soon. HHS did not respond to NPR’s request for comment by publication time.

In Bozeman, Mont., Stephanie McDowell, executive director of Bridgercare, said the nonprofit was one of about 50 organizations whose grants were terminated and that the cuts arrived without warning. “We truly had no indication that our funding would be cut,” McDowell said. This recent loss of federal funding has been challenging, McDowell said, and she has been trying to find other grants to apply to, but it’s not easy. Bridgercare serves 21 counties across Montana. “Ultimately, we can’t sustain an education program at the scale that we were at, serving 21 counties across the state of Montana without funding,” McDowell said. “And so we will have to lay off staff, and there will be youth that go without sex ed.”

In Des Moines, Iowa, Kristin Fairholm, executive director of EyesOpenIowa, said the cuts forced her organization to cancel programming that families and teens had signed up for. “You work hard to recruit these families to come with their teens to do your programming, and then you’re canceling them,” Fairholm said. “It’s been disheartening for us to have to tear everything down.” The sudden cuts created “ripples in the community, reputation-wise and trust-wise,” Fairholm said. She said even if the funding is eventually restored, the cancellation and the resulting uncertainty are likely to lead to more teen pregnancies and more sexually transmitted infections. “I worry for our young people,” Fairholm said. “I think we’re doing them a huge disservice.”

The U.S. teen pregnancy rate has been trending steadily downward in recent decades and hit a record low in 2025. Evidence-based sex education programs have been successful in Republican as well as Democratic-led states. McDowell, in Montana, said she has heard from many parents who are wary of comprehensive sex ed programs. “I always like to drive home the point that education and values are not the same thing,” McDowell said. “When we teach sex ed, we teach facts, we teach communication skills, healthy decision-making; parents and caregivers teach the values that guide those decisions.” “So we teach facts; families teach values,” McDowell said. “And those are truly complementary, not competing roles.”