THE NEW YORK TIMES: Trump administration decimates birth control office, locks workers out

The Trump administration has targeted a federal office that oversees a $300 million family planning program for layoffs, raising fears that it is effectively ending an initiative that provides contraception for millions of low-income women, according to three people with knowledge of the events.

The decimation of the US department of health and human services’ office of population affairs — part of a larger effort by President Donald Trump to fire federal employees during the government shutdown — threatens a program that has existed for over 50 years and also offers testing for sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy, as well as basic infertility care.

The layoffs targeting the office represent one of the most striking examples yet of Mr Trump’s vow to fire people in an effort to purge the government of what he has called “Democrat programs” during the shutdown, a stark departure from past practice that has raised major legal and constitutional questions.

Almost everyone in the office was locked out of their government emails and computers on Friday, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution.

On Wednesday afternoon, several staff members who had inquired about their employment status received messages from human resources, letting them know that staff members who had been shut out of their email were subject to layoffs, known in government terms as a reduction in force.

The employees were informed that emails notifying them of the layoffs were sent late Friday afternoon — when they had already been locked out of their accounts, according to messages reviewed by The New York Times.

A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration on Wednesday from conducting widespread layoffs of federal employees during the shutdown, but it was still unclear Wednesday evening which employees were covered by the injunction.

Upon learning of the layoffs, reproductive health advocates said they feared that the dismantling of the office would deprive women of critical services that allow them to decide whether and when they want to have children.

“The high-quality, confidential care they have relied on may disappear overnight,” said Jessica Marcella, a former deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the Biden administration. “If there’s no one there to run it, then functionally the program ceases to exist.”

The press secretary for the US department of health and human services, Emily Hilliard, did not answer a series of questions about what the layoffs would mean for the future of the family planning program.

“All HHS employees receiving reduction-in-force notices were designated nonessential by their respective divisions,” Hilliard said in a statement.

The Title X program had already come under threat in recent months.

The Trump administration suggested eliminating the program entirely in its 2026 budget proposal. In the meantime, the office had been directed to expand its focus on infertility issues, a priority for the Trump administration amid concerns about the falling US birthrate.

Several people familiar with those infertility efforts said they expected the Trump administration to continue pursuing them through a different office.

The Title X program has long been something of a political football, with administrations trying to change it to align with their priorities.

During the first Trump administration, the US office of population affairs tried to expand access to fertility-awareness-based methods often used by Christian couples for preventing pregnancy, while the Biden administration sought to bolster access to birth control and address inequities in reproductive health care.

The dismantling of the Title X office comes as a growing number of Mr Trump’s conservative allies are encouraging women to abandon methods of hormonal birth control.

Both Christian conservatives and proponents of Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s Make America Healthy Again movement have warned of the side effects that can come with taking hormonal birth control.

While some women do experience side effects from birth control, leading medical associations continue to recommend a wide range of hormonal contraception.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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