Democrats Would Prefer Trump *Not* Make Teen Pregnancy Great Again
Doesn't seem like a great time, actually!
For the last few years, the Right has been engaged in a clickbait campaign of “Everything you thought was good is actually bad, and everything you thought was bad is actually good!” They’re going after the sexual revolution, the Civil Rights Act, civil rights in general, the 19th Amendment, same-sex marriage even though it seemed like they had gotten over that shit, birthright citizenship, and the entire concept of empathy. Meanwhile they’re out here lauding Richard Nixon, claiming Watergate was a nothingburger, bringing back scientific racism, demanding women get barefoot and pregnant and back in the kitchen, and forcing religion on public school children.
Another thing they want to bring back? Teen pregnancy!
For years, teen pregnancy was one of the few things that everyone could collectively agree was a problem (except for those “pregnancy pact” girls they made the Lifetime movie about). For years, we argued about the best way to combat it — we argued comprehensive sex-ed, they pushed for abstinence-only education, purity balls, and whatever that Silver Ring Thing was. And hey! We did it! Teen pregnancy has decreased dramatically in the last 35 years. In the end, I honestly think it was a combination of comprehensive sex-ed in the areas where that was allowed, MTV’s Teen Mom, the internet making information about birth control and medication abortion more widely available, and a lack of in-person socialization that really drove those numbers down.
Either way, we’ve gone down from a rate of teens accounting for 61 out of 1000 births in 1991, to 35 in 2010 (which was still high, as the average for wealthy nations at that point was 20), to 11.7 — an 80 percent reduction.
That’s something we should be celebrating! But instead, the Trump administration decided to pull $68 million from the teen pregnancy prevention program (that, nota bene, was established in 2010). The Department of Health and Human Services claims that the reason they were pulled is because they “normalized or promoted sexual activity for minors” — we assume by doing what we know actually works, which is to inform them how to have safe sex, instead of abstinence-only education, which … well, look at the map.
Democrats in both chambers of Congress are not happy, and a group of Democratic senators sent a very strongly worded letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. demanding that he restore the grants.
Patty Murray (D-Washington) led the charge, joined by Senators Angela Alsobrooks (D-Maryland), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin), Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), Maria Cantwell (D-Washington), Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois), Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts), Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island), Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), Adam Schiff (D-California), Chuck Schumer (D-New York), Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan), Tina Smith (D-Minnesota), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts).
They write:
We write to express our outrage over your recent decision to terminate the vast majority of Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) Program grants, which will deprive teens across the U.S. of vital resources and threaten to unwind decades of progress made in reducing teen pregnancy. These grants, which were canceled in the middle of their five-year project period, supported evidence-based programs that worked to prevent teen pregnancy and behavioral risk factors underlying teen pregnancy, as is required by law. This decision to cancel 53 of 66 existing grants follows a pattern of actions the Trump Administration has taken to undermine access to comprehensive reproductive healthcare and put the health and wellbeing of our young people at risk. We call on you to immediately reinstate funding for these grantees who have a proven track record of working to uphold the goals of the program in accordance with the law.
After citing the impressive decline in teen births in the years since the TPP was established, and the fact that it was “bipartisan law that most recently appropriated funding for the program,” the senators questioned whether the Trump administration wanted to end teen pregnancy at all, given that many “pronatalist” MAGA Republicans have recently been lamenting the lack of teen births as of late.
We know that both Trump Administrations have long sought to destroy the TPP Program. President Trump’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposed to eliminate it, as did his prior budgets, and in 2017, the Trump Administration attempted to cancel every TPP Program grant, a decision that was ultimately struck down by the courts. Now, however, allies of the president have increasingly suggested that declining teen birth rates are a “problem.” It appears this administration may agree with that assessment as you cancel funding for these proven programs.
The Trump administration drive to make teenage girls pregnant again is very likely influenced by the influencers pushing for more knocked up teenagers and shotgun weddings. After all, that’s not a demographic they’d want to upset, particularly as it includes Stephen Miller and his wife, Katie Miller, who recently lamented that teenage girls and women in their 20s eschewing their “biological destiny” to have babies was somehow leading to the imminent death of civilization.
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As much as these freaks talk about “civilization,” as much as they love to claim that somehow our policies will turn the US into a “third world nation,” they’re the ones out here encouraging teen pregnancy, discouraging college, embracing policies that lead to an extremely high maternal mortality rate, pushing back on gains made by women, LGBTQ+ people, and ethnic minorities, wanting to bring back firing squads and public executions, dismantling the social safety net, and loving their wannabe strongman dictator. All things far more common in developing nations than in wealthy, generally stable, nations.
But hey! Who needs to live a nice life in a civilized nation that takes care of its people when you can live a life knowing that increasing numbers of teenagers are blowing up theirs by having kids while they are still kids themselves?
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
I had my first child two weeks to the day after I graduated with high honors from a Catholic prep school. I was seventeen years old. Primarily because my dad, profoundly disappointed in me, told me that I was a fuck up who couldn't do it I finally applied for grants and enrolled myself in college. Too many other young women drop out of school after becoming pregnant and never get an opportunity to continue their education, and if these psychopathic rethuglicon monsters succeed will be responsible for denying them the opportunity to realize their individual potential.
THIS is criminally sick and twisted. These manipulative malcontents are encouraging children to have children and that qualifies as ABUSE in my book, dammit.
You know who ELSE normalized or promoted sexual activity for minors?
FOX News, by complaining that pregnancy rates were down among 15-year-olds. Really.