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Contraception is a routine part of life for many Americans, and people across political parties agree that it should be legal and accessible. But the Trump administration is walking back access to contraception for some people. NPR's Katia Riddle reports.
KATIA RIDDLE, BYLINE: It's been over 50 years that women in this country have had the freedom to plan pregnancies. Birth control became widely available here in the 1960s. Under the Nixon administration, Congress created a program called Title X. It guaranteed free contraception to low-income people. That's still the funding that Stephanie McDowell relies on to run her public health program - or did, until a few months ago.
STEPHANIE MCDOWELL: We received a letter late in the afternoon on March 31 that our grant year-four funding that was to begin on April 1 - the next day - was being withheld.
RIDDLE: McDowell works at an organization called Bridgercare in Montana. They oversee 20 reproductive health clinics across the state. The Department of Health and Human Services withheld their funding because it said Bridgercare made public statements that violated the Civil Rights Act and recent executive orders from the Trump administration.
MCDOWELL: In our letter, they were citing, like, statements of antiracism, so statements that might be what we would commonly understand as, like, DEI efforts.
RIDDLE: That same thing happened at similar organizations across the country, though a few have since been notified their funding would resume. Still, as a result, more than 800,000 people either lost access to contraception or are at risk of losing it. That's according to a group of 15 organizations that are now suing the administration. Kimi Chernoby is an attorney with the National Women's Law Center.
KIMI CHERNOBY: So essentially, we see attacks on birth control at both the state level and the federal level.
RIDDLE: In addition to the Title X funds, she points to recent cuts to Medicaid. That's part of the Republican spending bill, which recently became law. These cuts jeopardize access to health care, including contraception, for millions of women in coming years. There's also recently been a number of attempts to limit access to contraception at the state level. After a right-to-contraception bill passed with bipartisan support in Virginia, the Republican governor there vetoed it. Chernoby says the Trump administration has created a permission structure for these kinds of efforts.
CHERNOBY: I think the fact that attacking birth control specifically appears in Project 2025 tells us how coordinated this is.
RIDDLE: Project 2025 is the Heritage Foundation's blueprint for the new Republican administration. President Trump has adopted many of its policies. The administration has not given a reason as to why it's limiting access to contraception. Neither the Department of Health and Human Services nor the Heritage Foundation responded to our request for comment on this story.
RIDDLE: Shireen Ghorbani is with Planned Parenthood of Utah. She points out that the Trump administration has called on Americans to have more babies.
SHIREEN GHORBANI: It is very clear that they are intent on expanding the population.
RIDDLE: Her organization is part of the lawsuit against the administration.
GHORBANI: And that can be everything from contraception, which I genuinely think is in the crosshairs now, to, you know, access to abortion care, which is something that, you know, Republicans have been working on for decades.
RIDDLE: Ghorbani says even though these cuts have hit low-income folks the hardest, attacks on public health impact the whole ecosystem of health care.
GHORBANI: All of this is building a structure that makes it harder and harder for individuals to control their sexual and reproductive lives, to plan their families and have kids when they want to.
RIDDLE: That's why, she says, five decades ago, the federal government created a program that allowed everyone to access birth control. Katia Riddle, NPR News.
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