The course in question is the Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) program.
By Catholics for Catholics
Spearheaded by Planned Parenthood, an alliance of local governments and organizations filed a lawsuit aimed at blocking the Trump administration’s funding changes to a teen program, balking at abstinence education and reportedly for not focusing enough on LGBT-identifying youths.
The program in question is the Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) program. Filed earlier this week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the suit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) contends 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.”
According to a story by The Christian Post, 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.
Congress first authorized and funded in 2009 the TPP program in 2009 to lower teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection rates. But in June the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ended 53 current TPPP grants and diverted $68 million in funds into new funding announcements.
In their suit, the plaintiffs affirm that the TPP program “has successfully reduced teen pregnancy for more than fifteen years.”
In a statement to the Christian Post, 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.
New, a 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.
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