At the end of June, the Office of Population Affairs (OPA), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced that Planned Parenthood of the Heartland will receive $2,053,383 over three years as part of a sex education grant. The grant is part of a program called “Optimally Changing the Map for Teen Pregnancy through Replication of Programs.”
According to OPA, the program aims to reduce teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections through “saturation of communities with the greatest needs and disparities by using a systems thinking approach to replicate effective programs with fidelity.” Planned Parenthood’s record of targeting children and teens with graphic sex education along with studies showing that sex education and access to birth control do not reduce teen pregnancy rates makes the award of such a sizable grant suspect.
READ: New analysis: Comprehensive sex ed in schools may actually be harming students
As commentators have noted, this is not the first grant of this type that Planned Parenthood of the Heartland has received for sex education. In other parts of the country, parents and community leaders have had to fight to remove Planned Parenthood from the classroom. The reality is that Planned Parenthood is not an altruistic, educational organization; Planned Parenthood is an abortion business that ends the lives of more preborn babies in abortion each year than any other organization. Giving Planned Parenthood access to school children, with a curriculum including pornography and BDSM, is not a sound strategy for reducing teen pregnancy.
The grant also shows one of the ways that Planned Parenthood continues to receive a steady stream of taxpayer dollars, despite being America’s largest abortion corporation. As Shane Vander Hart aptly wrote, “This is evidence that while the Trump administration has reduced funding to Planned Parenthood, they have not completely defunded the abortion giant and their funding supports Planned Parenthood’s efforts to target adolescents.”
Governmental funding streams to Planned Parenthood are extremely widespread and varied, and completely defunding the corporation is a complex and monumental challenge. It isn’t as simple as passing one law or issuing one executive order. However, one step toward defunding would be to remove the abortion business from sex education in favor of ethical and effective alternatives.
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