The Trump administration will provide $260 million in family planning grants to clinics after a months-long delay.
The Department of Health and Human Services announced on Friday the application process for grants administered through the Title X family planning program. The grants go to clinics and other organizations that administer services such as contraception, fertility and preconception care.
Valerie Huber, acting deputy assistant secretary for population affairs, told reporters Friday that the grants will be awarded in September, but some clinics are expected to run out of funding before then. A major reason is a delay in the funding announcement, which was supposed to be posted by Nov. 1, 2017, with a deadline to get applications by Jan. 3.
The grants were supposed to have been awarded by April 1, instead of September as HHS now plans to do.
Some Title X grant recipients will see funding run out in March, according to a letter from Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee to HHS last month.
HHS wants to avoid any lapse in funding and is communicating with grant recipients on that issue, Huber said.
“We recognize that we didn’t meet the estimated deadline that we had posted earlier,” she said. “I will say this is a program that is important to the administration and we think it is important we make some meaningful changes to expand and extend the coverage of this program.”
Huber said that women’s health and abortion provider Planned Parenthood is welcome to apply for the funding if it meets the criteria.
“We will be reviewing those [applications] and an independent review panel will also be reviewing those,” she said.
The announcement comes as congressional Democrats revealed that a conservative legal group called Alliance for Defending Freedom worked with the Trump administration to make it easier for states to defund Planned Parenthood.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., wrote to HHS earlier this month that a whistleblower provided documents indicating the group helped the administration craft a letter rescinding an earlier Obama administration guidance. The guidance made it harder for states to defund Planned Parenthood through Medicaid.
