(LifeSiteNews) — The Trump administration continues to work to redirect federal Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program funds away from programs that promote sexual promiscuity in favor of lessons that affirm marriage and family, to the chagrin of left-wing activists and their allies in the media.

Last month, LifeSiteNews reported that the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health’s Office of Population Affairs notified more than 50 organizations, including Planned Parenthood’s California Central Coast and Heartland affiliates plus several state and local government health departments, that upon review it determined “some curricula normalize adolescent sexual activity and are not age appropriate, as they contain overly sexually explicit or pornographic content that is not necessary to achieve the TPP program’s statutory mission.”

On July 22, the New York Times highlighted the cuts, interviewing several representatives of affected organizations who claimed that their content had been misrepresented and, as a result, were still deciding whether to attempt to apply under the new rules. HHS declined to respond.

“The new criteria say that grant recipients must teach abstinence as the only means to prevent teen pregnancy,” the Times reported. “Courses must stress the importance of marriage and procreation and instruct young people how to safeguard their fertility. They make scant reference to preventing sexually transmitted infections and virtually none to lesbian, gay and transgender sexuality.”

Supporters say the changes are long overdue and dismissed the complaints.

“The fact that some professional sex ed providers who receive millions of dollars in federal funds are complaining that these priorities are now required to continue receiving taxpayer dollars should alarm parents and enrage taxpayers,” said Family Research Council’s Quena González. “We shouldn’t be allowing, much less paying for, schools to tell students, ‘We know you’re going to experiment, wink wink, so here’s how to derive the most sexual pleasure from underage sex.’”

“For years, sexual risk avoidance had to justify itself while the alternative was funded as though its results were settled. That was never a research question. It was a worldview question dressed up as one,” added Institute for Women’s Health president Valerie Huber, who noted that now “risk avoidance is being treated as a legitimate public health goal for adolescents, the way it already is for every other youth risk behavior. We do not teach teenagers to smoke carefully. We tell them the truth about risk, and we help them stay at no risk or move from high risk to low risk to no risk. Sexual health is the one place we abandoned that model, but now HHS is being consistent across all youth risk behaviors. Bravo!”

Whatever the outcome of appeals by independent organizations who claim to have been wrongly impacted, there is no disputing the nature of the “sex education” practiced by the likes of Planned Parenthood. The nation’s largest abortion chain is notorious for promoting ideas about underage “safe sex” that are anything but.

Examples include its chatbot app “Roo,” intended for teens as young as 13, which suggests there’s no right age to begin sexual activity and encourages birth control; PP sexual education executive Bill Taverner, who advocates teaching children about pornography; flyers distributed to middle schoolers telling kids they don’t need parents’ permission for abortion or birth control; obscene Facebook ads apparently targeted at teenage girls; and much, much more.

Pro-lifers warn that Planned Parenthood’s efforts on the subject actually increase unintended pregnancy by encouraging sexual activity among minors rather than taking a firm line that it should be delayed until marriage. This is believed to come partly out of the “progressive” movement’s far-left ideology and partly in order to generate more demand for Planned Parenthood’s “services.”

Former President Barack Obama was adamantly pro-abortion, but even a 2016 report from his Office of Adolescent Health found that, across six different Planned Parenthood affiliate partners, more than 3,500 students, and 87 schools, a Planned Parenthood-backed “sex-ed” program left students “significantly more likely than controls to have ever been pregnant or to have caused a pregnancy.”

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