Obama Budget Sets Record for Family Planning Funding

WASHINGTON DC, May 8, 2009 – President Obama’s 2010 budget proposal, released yesterday, would increase international family planning assistance to a record level of $593 million. It also includes a $50 million contribution to UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, and moves funding away from abstinence-only sex education and into programs to prevent teen pregnancy.

The proposal for bilateral and multilateral family planning assistance, if appropriated by Congress, would be “a modest, albeit significant” increase over last year’s $545 million, but the largest total ever approved, according to Craig Lasher, senior policy analyst at Population Action International. The plan also allows Medicaid to expand its program providing birth control services to poor women.

The changes are independent of the six-year $12 billion Global Health Initiative announced earlier this week, which commits the Obama administration to “focus attention on broader global health challenges including child and maternal health, family planning and neglected tropical diseases.” Details of that proposal are expected to be announced next week.

Funding budgeted for UNFPA in fiscal 2010 renews the $50 million Congress earmarked for the agency in fiscal 2009, which Secretary of State Clinton said would be released in the near future. The budget documents also dropped Bush administration requirements for restrictions on UNFPA funding and for a presidential determination on whether or not to release the funds.

The budget eliminated a $38 million state-grant program for abstinence-only sex education in schools, replacing it with a $50 million proposal to develop new “evidence-based and promising teen pregnancy-prevention programs” and to support existing ones, the budget documents said. The best results, the plan said, come from programs that “provide a range of services in addition to comprehensive sex education.”

Obama left in place a ban on using federal money to pay for most abortions, which drew criticism from abortion-rights advocates.

“For millions of women, federal programs are their only means of getting health care,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights. She called on Congress to eliminate the restriction, saying it would “demonstrate much-needed U.S. leadership and commitment to the human rights principles at the heart of reproductive rights.”

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