As of August 19th, 2019, Planned Parenthood pulled out of Title X funding, money that more than four million people rely on to access contraception and other essential health care. Established in 1970, Title X provides affordable birth control and reproductive health care to people with low incomes who couldn’t otherwise afford health care services on their own.

Title X funding is federal funding from the government that is used towards family and health services, which includes but are not limited to STD testing, cancer screenings, and pregnancy tests. Title X funding provides 260 million dollars to many different family centers. Planned Parenthood got around 60 million dollars, but this time they rejected it. These new steps stem from President Trump’s new abortion limits.

In the public eye, Planned Parenthood is known for performing abortions on women who for any reason, have decided to terminate their pregnancy, whether by choice or that carrying a baby to term could harm them, which isn’t too accurate according to statistics. Recently, Trump and many state’s governments have passed laws and restrictions against abortion, and those laws have tightened. Abortion first became legal in 1973 after the Roe v. Wade case. Now in 2019, 6 states have set restrictions, such as laws against getting one after a certain amount of weeks. Planned Parenthood was not having it. They pulled out of Title X, so they can still perform abortions for any of their patients (state permitting).

Now pulling out on Title X can mean many different things for Planned Parenthood. It is cutting their funding in half, which can affect low income women. 80% of its patients are part of low income families, so prices will rise on things like birth control, cancer screening, STD screening, and more. This could also cause another STD outbreak. Planned Parenthood pulling out of Title X funding can cause more bad than good.  They have stated, “Planned Parenthood is going to fight for our patients’ health and rights — and for the millions of people in this country who need to access quality reproductive health care.”