The Trump Administration’s HHS newly released Title X funding guidance lowers longstanding patient safety safeguards and dilutes oversight of desperately needed reproductive health care services. By expanding the federal family planning program’s eligibility to include non-clinical and faith-based organizations without requiring medical licensure, the guidance positions unregulated pregnancy clinics (UPCs) to compete for federal funds—despite operating outside the standards that govern licensed healthcare providers and without any enforcement or oversight of patient privacy protections.
But this is not altogether surprising given another recently released document from HHS. Following a 2024 call for an investigation into federal funding of UPCs by U.S. Representatives Jamie Raskin and Maxwell Frost, the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s March 2, 2026 report identified only $34 million over 6 years in narrowly limited, clearly traceable federal funding to 16 crisis pregnancy centers—while explicitly warning of major data gaps and inconsistent classification across programs. In contrast, a 2024 analysis from Health Management Associates, which examined the entire UPC industry (3,000+ organizations) as well as subawards and state-administered federal funding streams including Title V and TANF, estimated that federal funding of UPCs reaches into the hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
That discrepancy is not academic—it reflects a federal funding system that lacks basic transparency and accountability. Expanding eligibility under Title X without first resolving these gaps risks directing even more taxpayer dollars into an industry plagued by ongoing financial waste the federal government cannot currently track, evaluate, or regulate. At a minimum, the Administration should establish a complete accounting of existing funding flows to all UPCs and require that any recipient of existing or future federal funds meet baseline standards for medical oversight, privacy protections, and patient safety.