Planned Parenthood has failed to follow the law, yet it gets hundreds of millions in federal funds

Planned Parenthood, which continues to receive the bulk of its taxpayer dollars through Medicaid reimbursements and the Title X Family Planning Program, has repeatedly failed to abide by mandatory reporting laws regarding child sexual abuse. Yet, both Medicaid and Title X require participants to comply with state and federal laws regarding the reporting of abuse.

Planned Parenthood’s primary funding sources: Medicaid and Title X

When legislation was proposed in 2015 to defund Planned Parenthood, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that Planned Parenthood received approximately $450 million annually in just federal funds.

CBO broke the funding down to two main sources: Medicaid and Title X. CBO found:

• $390 million is provided through the Medicaid program and less than $1 million is provided through the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and the Medicare program combined.
• Approximately $60 million is provided through the National Family Planning Program, which operates under Title X of the Public Health Service Act (commonly referred to as Title X).

2013 – 2015: Live Action News previously documented a 2018 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report detailing direct federal funding from government agencies to Planned Parenthood between years 2013-2015. The pro-life Family Research Council analyzed the GAO report and concluded that federal government agency dollars (including Title X) to Planned Parenthood averaged out to approximately $500 million each year, ($288 million in federal grants, contracts, and reimbursements and $1.2 billion in Medicaid.)

2016-2018: GAO reports published in the past few years have revealed that from 2016-2018, Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) received $1.6 billion in federal taxpayer dollars from Health and Human Services (HHS), averaging $533 million per year ($304 million through grants or cooperative agreements and $1.3 billion from Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP).

2019-2021: GAO reports from 2019-2021 showed that PPFA received $1.78 billion in federal taxpayer funding in just those three years, an average of $592 million federal dollars passed to Planned Parenthood — while Planned Parenthood abortions totaled $1.1 million within those same three years.

According to the report, between 2021 ($5.71 million) and 2022 ($27.06 million), the Biden Administration’s HHS obligations to Planned Parenthood increased nearly 374%.

Over $1.53 billion in reimbursements from Medicare ($3.28M), Medicaid ($1535.27M) as well as CHIP ($50K) went to Planned Parenthood, and Planned Parenthood received nearly $149 million in grants and cooperative agreements, according to the GAO report.

2024: Members of Congress recently requested for the GAO to provide them with updated numbers for the years 2022-2024.

Title X funds Planned Parenthood 

Republicans initiated Title X

Title X was enacted in 1970, and as Live Action News has previously documented, one of the chief co-sponsors of the Title X statute allocating millions of federal tax dollars to Planned Parenthood was Rep. George H.W. Bush (R-Texas), who later became our nation’s 41st president. In 1970, the United States House of Representatives voted 298 to 32 to approve the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act, Title X of the Public Health Service Act, authorizing federal dollars to pay for “family planning” services for low-income women.

Live Action News has published additional information indicating that the push for federal population control dollars by Congressman Bush was actually initiated by Planned Parenthood and its “special affiliate,” the Guttmacher Institute, and enacted under the Richard Nixon Administration. (Read about that here).

Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, had been a board member of Planned Parenthood and, at that time, prior to Planned Parenthood’s decision to commit abortions, approved of the organization’s goals.

Title X is administered through the Office of Population Affairs (OPA) under HHS. The federal program consists of “grantees,” or “direct recipient[s]” of Title X funds, defined as “the entity that receives Federal financial assistance by means of a grant, and assumes legal and financial responsibility and accountability for the awarded funds, for the performance of the activities approved for funding and for reporting required information to the Office of Population Affairs.”

Funding can also go to “sub-recipients,” which, according to requirements, are “[t]hose entities that provide family planning services with Title X funds under a written agreement with a grantee. May also be referred to as delegates or contract agencies.” The facilities where grantee or sub-recipients are located are called “service sites.”

Today, Planned Parenthood, known for violating requirements to report sexual abuse, is one of the largest recipients of those tax dollars, securing about $60 million a year from taxpayers. In 2015, 474 of Planned Parenthood’s nearly 650 facilities were Title X recipients, according to a Guttmacher Institute report.

While the federal Hyde Amendment prohibits federal taxpayer dollars from funding abortion directly, money is fungible. Money given to Planned Parenthood helps to pay for salaries, facility rent, and general overhead of the same facilities and employees who also participate in abortions.

This is why, in 2019, President Donald Trump implemented the ‘Protect Life Rule,’ a rule change which blocked facilities that received federal Title X family planning funds from providing or referring for abortion, including Planned Parenthood. At that time, HHS Secretary Alex Azar noted in a FOX interview, “Cancer screenings and preventative services [at Planned Parenthood facilities] are down 60 percent over the last eight years.”

Rather than stop committing abortions, according to a press release published by the Office of Population Affairs (OPA), Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocacy or abortion-sympathetic recipients relinquished $33.6 million in Title X grants. In 2019, Planned Parenthood made up just nine percent (9%) of the 90 HHS-approved Title X Family Planning grant recipients.

Shortly after taking office in 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order instructing HHS to review the rule enacted by the previous administration. In October of that year, the Biden-Harris administration revoked Trump’s protections, announcing their intention to fully restore the funding to abortion businesses beginning November 8, 2021.

And they did.

Between 2022 and 2024, OPA allocated nearly $60 million to Planned Parenthood. Monies allocated are different from dollars sent to a Title X recipient during a specific year, and they break down as follows:

• In 2022,  OPA awarded funding to 89 Title X grant recipients, directly allocating over $16.8 million to 13 Planned Parenthood recipients. Planned Parenthood made up 15% of Title X recipients.
• In 2023, OPA awarded funding to 86 Title X grant recipients, directly allocating nearly $20.8 million to 13 Planned Parenthood recipients. Planned Parenthood made up nearly 16% of Title X recipients.
• In 2024, OPA awarded funding to 86 Title X grant recipients, directly allocating nearly $20.6 million to 13 Planned Parenthood recipients. Planned Parenthood again made up nearly 16% of Title X recipients.

The recipients include Planned Parenthood affiliates, which means the federal dollars are being funneled to multiple Planned Parenthood centers under each affiliate’s control.

Planned Parenthood violates Title X requirements to report child sexual abuse

Title X makes it mandatory for recipients to report child sexual abuse, protect patient privacy, and refrain from discriminating based on race and other characteristics — all of which Planned Parenthood has failed to do.

A May 2008 presentation by Susan B. Moskosky, Director of the Office of Family Planning/Office of Population Affairs at HHS, also made it clear that Title X recipients are expected to report child sexual abuse.

As Live Action News previously documented, on April 25, 2014, OPA released Title X Family Planning Guidelines, which clarified that “all Title X providers must comply with State laws requiring notification or the reporting of child abuse, child molestation, sexual abuse, rape, or incest.” This was reiterated in the 2014 Program Requirements for Title X Funded Family Planning Projects.

According to a March 2016 report by the Congressional Research Service, reporting suspicion of child sexual abuse is expected of Title X providers. The report stated that, “Although minors are to receive confidential services, Title X providers are not exempt from state notification and reporting laws on child abuse, child molestation, sexual abuse, rape, or incest.”

More currently, OPA’s July 2022 Title X handbook is clear: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no provider of services under title X of the PHS Act shall be exempt from any State law requiring notification or the reporting of child abuse, child molestation, sexual abuse, rape, or incest.”

It also reiterates that Title X funds cannot pay for abortions:

That amounts provided to said projects under such title shall not be expended for abortions, that all pregnancy counseling shall be nondirective, and that such amounts shall not be expended for any activity (including the publication or distribution of literature) that in any way tends to promote public support or opposition to any legislative proposal or candidate for public office.

Under the heading “Project Administration” in the 2022 Title X handbook, it is also clear that recipients must protect patient privacy and they cannot discriminate on the basis of race, religion, or sex, etc.:

• “Provide services in a manner that does not discriminate against any client based on religion, race, color, national origin, disability, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, sex characteristics, number of pregnancies, or marital status. (42 CFR § 59.5(a)(4))”
• Ensure that all information as to personal facts and circumstances obtained by the project staff about individuals receiving services must be held confidential and must not be disclosed without the individual’s documented consent, except as may be necessary to provide services to the patient or as required by law, with appropriate safeguards for confidentiality. Information may otherwise be disclosed only in summary, statistical, or other form that does not identify the individual. Reasonable efforts to collect charges without jeopardizing client confidentiality must be made. Recipients must inform the client of any potential for disclosure of their confidential health information to policyholders where the policyholder is someone other than the client. (42 CFR § 59.10(a))

In addition to Tile X, an Office of Inspector General report published in 2020 claimed that Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) regulations “require all facilities and their practitioners to comply with the mandatory reporting laws for abuse and neglect applicable to their State, including compliance with timeliness requirements.”

The report also noted that sexually transmitted diseases, as well as coding for “[e]ncounter for pregnancy test and childbirth and childcare instruction,” may be indicative of potential child abuse.

Despite these very specific requirements, Live Action News has documented that Planned Parenthood has not only repeatedly failed to report child sexual abuse, but it has also been accused of discrimination and failing to protect the private medical data of their clients, among a host of other abuses. A recent op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy indicated that defunding Planned Parenthood might be on their radar of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

And it should be.

Over the years, while Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) increased health care services and clients, Planned Parenthood’s actual health services and clients have been on the decline. What has skyrocketed at Planned Parenthood is the organization’s taxpayer dollars and abortions. Since 2000, Planned Parenthood has committed over 7.1 million abortions while receiving nearly $10.7 billion from taxpayers, while FQHCs do not commit abortions.

Live Action News previously detailed multiple abuses (including accusations of racial and pregnancy discrimination as well as a failure to protect confidential client information), by the abortion corporation. Live Action News also plans to report on multiple examples of actual cases where Planned Parenthood failed to report child sexual abuse, often leaving the young teen victims to be repeatedly sexually abused following their encounter with Planned Parenthood.

Tell President Trump, RFK, Jr., Elon, and Vivek:

Stop killing America’s future. Defund Planned Parenthood NOW!