The new Title X
HHS recently announced a new plan for implementing the Office of Population Affairs' Title X program that largely focusing on prioritizing family planning and pregnancy while potentially limiting access to contraceptives. The document encourages grant applications from organizations that plan on implementing “innovative strategies to … reduce overmedicalization,” “advance reproductive goals counseling for all clients,” and “support family formation."
Within the plan, HHS lays out “expectations for recipients” of Title X grants such as “reducing overmedicalization in health care” and “advancing optimal health” including by “expanding access to fertility-awareness–based methods (often referred to as natural family planning).” More explicitly, the document also points to a recent “decrease in females’ ... use of any contraception” and calls for applicants to “integrate noninvasive, evidence-based practices that promote health literacy, fertility awareness, and reproductive health without unnecessary medicalization or symptom suppression."
The document explains that the “primary focus” of the OPA is to address the causes of infertility and implement family planning — but makes little mention of contraception except to note its decline in use. A spokesperson from HHS declined to answer whether or not the agency will allow the use of Title X funds for hormonal birth control in 2027.
Project 2025 proposals
Project 2025 was an extreme right-wing initiative organized by The Heritage Foundation to provide policy and personnel to the current Republican presidential administration. The project, which involved more than 100 partner organizations, included a nearly 900-page policy book — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.
In the Mandate for Leadership chapter on HHS, chapter author and Heritage Foundation Vice President Roger Severino wrote that “Title X family planning program should be reframed with a focus on better education around fertility awareness and holistic family planning.” Severino also called for the elimination of “religious discrimination in grant selections” for Title X, which the new HHS plan addresses by stating, “HHS will not require grantees, individuals and institutions, who are covered by the Weldon Amendment to counsel or refer for abortions, notwithstanding the program’s current regulations.”
Severino also wrote that the “CDC should update its public messaging about the unsurpassed effectiveness of modern fertility awareness–based methods (FABMs) of family planning and stop publishing communications that conflate such methods with the long-eclipsed ‘rhythm’ or ‘calendar’ methods.”
Besides the Mandate for Leadership, several member organizations of the Project 2025 coalition also published their own positions on reproductive health during the 2024 presidential campaign, including hundreds of calls to roll back access to abortion, IVF and surrogacy, and contraception.
Project 2025 partner organizations have pushed misinformation and fearmongering about contraceptives. The president of Center for Family and Human Rights called contraception “one of the great scourges … of all time” in a 2014 article. Family Research Council's Mary Szoch said that birth control “has also led to the devaluing, and even hatred of, the natural consequence of sex — children.” The Intercollegiate Studies Institute published a book review that claimed “the sexual free-for-all made possible by abortion (and perhaps contraception) harms both men and women.”
More recently, Project 2025 lead The Heritage Foundation published a report titled “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years” in which it called for the restoration of “natural family with married parents.” The report also argues that one of the “chief” blames for the “present malady” of family life in America was “sexual revolution” in which “the Pill and other contraceptives swept the country—which promised to reduce the unwanted consequences of casual sex with multiple partners across a lifetime."
Back in October of 2025, Heritage Foundation authors Scott Yenor and Jennifer Galardi published an article similarly arguing that “the proliferation of the birth control pill since the 1960s has fostered a number of grave consequences for our society.” The article also chastises Kennedy for staying quiet on the issue, admitting that “calling for restrictions on birth control pills would likely cause a frenzy among many” but arguing that birth control pills’ “costs need to be fully exposed if we are going to restore human health.”
Right-wing media and MAHA
The idea of encouraging natural birth control and family planning while abandoning hormonal birth control has grown in conservative circles. Popular MAHA-aligned podcasters Alex Clark and Allie Beth Stuckey are a part of the movement spreading false claims about contraceptives. Both Stuckey and Clark have interviewed “hormone expert” Emily Detrick on the dangers of hormonal birth control. Stuckey's 2024 podcast episode with Detrick was titled “Birth Control is Making Women Bisexual,” during which Detrick claimed women on birth control are more likely to be attracted to feminine men — a claim that has been debunked — and falsely insinuated that hormonal birth control can lead to infertility.
