A giant inflatable intrauterine device is displayed outside of Virginia’s Capitol on Feb. 7, 2025. (Photo by Charlotte Rene Woods/Virginia Mercury)
While legal battles over federal funding to Planned Parenthood after Congress passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” in early July have paused efforts to defund the organization, three Planned Parenthood clinics in Virginia had already lost Title X family planning funding this past April, forcing thousands to pay more for reproductive health care, or lose access to it altogether.
“That funding is still frozen sadly,” said Virginia League for Planned Parenthood CEO Paulette McElwain.
Established in 1970, the federal program helps low and extremely low-income people access family planning care like contraception, sexually transmitted disease screenings and treatment as well as cancer screenings at little or no cost.
McElwain said this past spring that clinics became aware of a freeze on Title X funding by President Donald Trump’s administration on March 31, which means that about 11,000 Virginian patients have had to pay higher costs for services or forgo them since then.
Affected health centers are in Richmond, Hampton, and Virginia Beach.
The initial freeze to the grants stemmed from the Trump administration’s crackdown on organizations that include Diversity, Equity and Inclusion practices in their work or mission statements. The pause affected nine Planned Parenthood grantees and seven nonprofit grantees that included clinics, health departments and federally qualified health centers.
While Title X grants have been restored to some recipients, like a health nonprofit that disburses the funding to clinics in Missouri, that hasn’t been the case for Virginia’s Planned Parenthood clinics.
Planned Parenthood clinics provide a variety of reproductive health care, but their name has become synonymous mainly with the abortion procedures it also provides and drawn ire from abortion opponents.
The freeze wasn’t the first time Trump has used the family planning funding to also crack down on abortion providers. Regulations during his first term disqualified clinics from receiving Title X funds that had co-located abortion services or who provided abortion referrals. President Joe Biden’s subsequent administration reversed those actions.
Planned Parenthood continues to exist under a microscope of scrutiny by the Trump administration and Republican members of Congress, whose reconciliation bill this summer seeks to defund the organization by restricting Medicaid reimbursements. Though the organization is not specifically named in the bill, its leaders claim it was meant to affect their nearly 600 centers across 48 states. A federal judge recently blocked the effort for the time being.
Likewise, a lawsuit is in progress concerning the Title X funding freeze that hit some clinics this spring. Filed in the District Court of Columbia, the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association and the American Civil Liberties Union suit argues that about 842,000 people across the affected states faced reduced access to care.
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Author: Charlotte Rene Woods
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