Teens need more than abstinence-only education

For the second time in less than a week, a federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration was unjustified in ending a teen pregnancy prevention program — administered by Planned Parenthood chapters — three years into a five-year study of the effectiveness of the comprehensive education programs.

The decision serves as a rebuke of an administrative decision that arbitrarily sought to terminate an effective program that was benefiting the health of teens by preventing pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases while also — cynically — aimed at preempting an examination of the program’s effectiveness.

A U.S. District Court judge in Spokane issued a permanent injunction Tuesday that stops the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from cutting funding for the final two years of prevention programs run by Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho. That decision followed a similar one April 19 in a D.C. federal district court that also found the cuts to the grants were unlawful.

Also last week, a three-judge panel for the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a 2016 Ohio state law that barred Planned Parenthood and other providers that offer abortion services from receiving federal funds for teen pregnancy prevention programs.

Last summer, HHS cut funding for 81 programs across the nation that administered Teen Pregnancy Prevention grants, providing comprehensive education services to 1.2 million youths in 39 states. The funding administered by the Planned Parenthood chapter in Washington and Idaho served about 40,000 youths in the two states, The Spokesman-Review reported Tuesday.

The funding cuts, aimed squarely at Planned Parenthood, followed a month after President Trump’s appointment of Valerie Huber to a top HHS office. Huber, before joining the administration, worked for an advocacy group that promotes abstinence-only education.

As the funding cuts were announced, Huber wrote an opinion piece critical of the lack of funding for abstinence-only programs. The 2019 federal budget released earlier this year by the Trump administration allocates $75 million to HHS to fund abstinence-only and “personal responsibility” sex education programs, rather than more comprehensive programs that — along with abstinence — also discuss birth control methods and ways to protect against sexually transmitted diseases.

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