The Trump administration has a new plan for teenagers learning about pregnancy: Beginning this summer, it will steer millions of dollars toward organizations that focus on anatomy, fertility tracking, hormonal production and “reproductive goals counseling.”

The plan will also emphasize abstinence from sex and the importance of marriage. 

In doing so, it will pivot away from programs that serve populations in areas with the greatest need and that use particular evidence-based programming to reduce teen pregnancies — and some say the new language puts a greater focus on planning for pregnancy rather than preventing it.

The new grant application terms are consistent with an approach called restorative reproductive medicine that has become popular among conservative groups, including those who identify with Make America Healthy Again initiatives.

The approach discourages the use of any type of contraception and instead focuses on fertility awareness methods, usually in the context of couples trying to get pregnant without medical intervention such as in vitro fertilization or other treatments. That typically means not using any birth control and instead tracking indicators such as cervical mucus, body temperature and other physical symptoms to monitor the menstrual cycle. 

Academic studies have repeatedly shown that abstinence-only approaches result in higher rates of teen pregnancy and births, even after adjusting for other socioeconomic factors.

Congress created the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program in 2010, and has renewed funding for it on a bipartisan basis over the past 16 years, including the 2026 budget bill, despite President Donald Trump’s office targeting the program for defunding. 

During that time, teen birth rates declined by about 72%, according to federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, and much of the drop in the overall national birth rate is because teen birth rates have fallen so sharply. Experts say more comprehensive sex education, better access to contraception for girls and general behavioral trends around sex explain that shift. 

Amy Friedrich-Karnik, director of federal policy at the reproductive rights-focused Guttmacher Institute, said the new language in the teen pregnancy program is similar to the new funding opportunity released for Title X, which is a more than 50-year-old grant program designed to help low-income populations receive reproductive healthcare.

“We do think that fertility awareness-based methods should be explained to patients and they should have the right to understand what those options are,” Friedrich-Karnik said, describing the administration’s approach. “But (patients) need to also be aware of the full options that are available and the pluses and minuses of every option that is out there.”

Body literacy modules

The intent of the program, according to the original law, was for grants to fund “medically accurate and age-appropriate programs that reduce teen pregnancy” and then to continue the programs shown to be most effective through rigorous academic evaluation. According to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Population Affairs, those programs were developed for children and young adults between the ages of 10 and 24 and the people in their lives who support them.

Most of the grants that were canceled this year were programs implementing the methods proven effective in reducing teen pregnancy, while others were more research based, in which additional strategies are tested and refined. Several of those programs were canceled as well in states such as Louisiana, Texas and Washington.

A separate federal grant program called Sexual Risk Avoidance Education exists for abstinence-only programs, but the evidence-based criteria for Teen Pregnancy Prevention is much higher, said Rachel Fey, vice president of policy at national reproductive rights advocacy organization Power to Decide. She sees the new funding opportunity for teen pregnancy prevention as an extension of the sexual risk avoidance program — one of the pillars of the new description tells grantees to “incorporate sexual risk avoidance education.”

The funding notice requires applicants to pass an “alignment review” with agency priorities that is conducted by political appointees, a new process that the U.S. Office of Management and Budget is trying to implement for federal financial assistance across the government.

Applicants for the new teen pregnancy program are required to teach body literacy, including two distinct modules about anatomy and reproduction for girls and boys. 

Grace Stark, editor-in-chief of a Texas-based nonprofit called Natural Womanhood that promotes fertility awareness and restorative reproductive medicine, told Stateline by email that the new funding opportunity’s focus could be helpful, as it “encourages young people of both sexes to consider their reproductive goals now and in the future, and how their current health and lifestyle choices can impact those future goals.”

The female module must include instruction about the menstrual cycle and the patterns and key indicators of the phases of the cycle, and recognize ovulation as the “central event and primary indicator of hormonal health and fertility.” It must also include the advantages and disadvantages of “ovarian suppression” compared to approaches that address “root causes.” 

Restorative reproductive medicine focuses on identifying underlying conditions that contribute to infertility or other reproductive health-related problems, according to the International Institute of Restorative Reproductive Medicine. It refers to conventional approaches that use treatments that “suppress normal physiology,” such as various forms of birth control, and claims that RRM works with the body to treat problems. 

Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi introduced a bill in Congress in 2025 that would have directed federal health agencies to promote such training for medical students and professionals through existing funding opportunities in Title X and the HHS Office of Population Affairs. That bill didn’t advance.

Joely Pritzker, who has been a family nurse practitioner for more than 20 years and is the senior director of healthcare for Power to Decide, said the “ovarian suppression” language likely refers to one of the most common ways birth control works, which is to temporarily suppress ovulation. Typically, in medical practice, ovarian suppression refers to lowering the estrogen produced by the ovaries, sometimes to prevent or treat breast cancer.

Pritzker said most people in the reproductive health world would support the idea of teaching young people about their bodies, but said it comes down to how that information is interpreted and applied, and that the new program design is unclear about those intentions. Not wanting to use hormonal birth control is different from discouraging the use of it entirely, she said.

“I genuinely don’t know what (body literacy) means to the folks who wrote these proposals, other than based on everything else we know, there is an assumption that if people knew more about their bodies, they would choose not to use, for example, hormonal birth control,” Pritzker said, adding that the assumption is false.

Stark, of Natural Womanhood, said body literacy can help young people notice signs of reproductive health issues,“which (restorative reproductive medicine)-trained healthcare professionals can help diagnose and treat to improve current health and protect future fertility — and future reproductive health plans.”

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists warns against leaning on restorative reproductive medicine in fertility discussions, saying it can be “ineffective and redundant” and unnecessarily delay a patient in seeking medical treatment when it is presented as the sole or best approach. 

The male health module, according to the federal grant funding notice, includes an emphasis on understanding how testosterone is a hormone that is responsive to sleep, physical activity and environmental factors. Instruction must include the physiology of arousal, and address how “repeated or artificially stimulated arousal may affect neural development and behavior over time,” seemingly referring to masturbation.

Testosterone has been a heavy focus of the Trump administration. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. frequently refers to lower sperm counts among men, including teen males, despite no scientific evidence backing up those claims when it comes to young men. He cites it as a reason for birth rates that have remained flat or lowered slightly every year since 2015, though experts say the lower national birth rate is actually because of the lower teen pregnancy and birth rates. 

U.S. Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also announced last week that military men over the age of 30 would receive annual testosterone level checks, which doctors say could actually be counterproductive to military readiness and could risk infertility. 

The teen pregnancy prevention programs must also include counseling on reproductive goals, and “should affirm marriage and parenthood as meaningful and value components of adult life,” the federal description says.

New recipients could include crisis pregnancy centers 

Ginger Mullaney, CEO of former youth services grantee Healthy Futures of Texas, said its nearly $2 million grant funded 11 programs that served various populations, including young in foster care, and runaway and unhoused youth. The grant was cancelled, which shocked her, she said, because the group had already adapted all of its materials and programs to comply with new executive orders around diversity, equity and inclusion and other administration priorities. The new curriculum had been approved.

“We felt like we had already made all the necessary changes to comply,” Mullaney said.

Earlier this month, Healthy Futures was still deciding whether it would apply for the new round of funding. It’s not an easy task, she said, in part because the government documents no longer include a list of approved programs that qualify for the funding. Mullaney said there used to be a list of more than two dozen programs that the agency approved because they had been academically evaluated for effectiveness, but that list is gone now. However, the instructions still tell applicants they must use an evidence-based program. 

“We don’t know what (programs are) considered evidence based,” Mullaney said.

The new funding opportunity also awards more points to applicants that have never been awarded funds before.

Alison Macklin, director of public affairs at sex ed advocacy group SIECUS, said based on what she has seen at the local level, the new funding opportunity is paving the way for crisis pregnancy centers to apply for and receive federal dollars. 

Crisis pregnancy centers are anti-abortion organizations that typically offer free ultrasounds, pregnancy tests and parenting classes with a religious mission, and most often do not provide or refer for contraception. States Newsroom found earlier this year that the centers have received nearly $500 million in taxpayer dollars from state and federal sources since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022.

“They’ve been given an inch, so they’re trying to take a mile, is what it seems to me,” Macklin said.

‘Losing trusted relationships’

In mid-May, staff at Children’s Aid said they expected their $936,700 Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program grant to be renewed for another year after meeting with U.S. Health and Human Services and receiving nothing but positive feedback about their program. It was eligible for funding through 2028.

But at the end of June, they received another letter letting them know the grant was canceled, effective immediately.

“It was an overnight shutdown with no transition period for staff, or for young people that were relying on these resources,” said Rhonda Braxton, vice president of health and wellness at Children’s Aid, a 170-year-old organization in New York City.

It was one of 53 grantees that received letters from the federal government agency notifying them that their funding had been terminated without notice. Most were told their programs were now misaligned with federal agency priorities and that they normalized sexual activity for minors. Three affected grantees and SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change filed a lawsuit challenging the action on July 14. 

Braxton said the abrupt termination is expected to result in nine people losing their jobs, six of whom worked full time, and will affect the 1,200 young people who were served each year in areas such as the South Bronx, Harlem and Washington Heights. A group of high school-aged peer educators also found themselves suddenly without the summer job they’d planned to have with Children’s Aid.

“These young people are losing trusted relationships in an era of misinformation and distrust,” Braxton said.

She said they’ve made the decision not to apply for the new funding because it seems to be aligned with promoting abstinence-only initiatives, and, “Our experience has been that that’s not evidence-based programming.”

Stateline reporter Kelcie Moseley-Morris can be reached at kmoseley@stateline.org.

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This story was produced in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Investigative Journalism class taught in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Click here to read highlights from the story

• Wisconsin still allows 16- and 17-year-olds to marry with parental consent even though they aren’t legally adults.
• The number of child marriages has gone down significantly over the past 30 years, but there are still a couple dozen per year.
• A Democratic bill that would ban the practice hasn’t moved out of committees controlled by Republicans, who say the current law respects parental rights.
• Whether the bill passes next session will likely depend on who controls the Legislature after the November election.

Last month deep red Oklahoma became the 17th state to ban child marriage — the practice of allowing minors, typically 16- and 17-year-olds, to marry with parental consent.

“Oklahoma has a responsibility to protect children and make sure they have the opportunity to reach adulthood before making decisions that will shape the rest of their lives,” Republican state Rep. Nicole Miller said in a press release.

Most states that have banned child marriage to date are led by Democrats. Wisconsin, where Republicans control the Legislature, is not following their lead.

In Wisconsin 16- and 17-year-olds can still be married with written parental permission submitted to a county clerk along with a standard marriage license. Between 2015 and 2024, 297 minors were married in Wisconsin, according to the Legislative Reference Bureau.

Notably, these teenagers can be married not just to other minors, but also to adults. State law also provides an exception to its rules on statutory rape: Sexual relations between an adult and a teenager are not a crime as long as they are married.

“These are marriages between a minor woman and an older man,” said state Rep. Ann Roe, D-Janesville, a co-author of recent legislation to ban the practice. “The behavior outside of marriage would be a felony. … Using this old law that’s still on the books that allows for child marriage is incredibly disturbing and incredibly dangerous for young women.”

In the 2025-26 legislative session, Roe joined Sen. Mark Spreitzer, D-Beloit, in his yearslong campaign to end child marriage in Wisconsin. Each time, the legislation has died in committee. It has never received a public hearing, much less reached a floor vote. Republican leadership has refused to move it, saying the proposed law infringes on the rights of parents to decide what’s best for their children.

Incremental changes

The rules for child marriage in Wisconsin have changed throughout history. The 1849 Wisconsin statutes set the minimum marital age for males at 18, and 15 for females. Males under the age of 21 and girls under the age of 18 still needed parental consent. By 1959, the minimum age for females was raised to 16. The law was amended again in 1971 to allow all men 18 or older to marry without parental consent, and girls under 18 but at least 16 to marry with parental consent.

A change to the law in 1959 allowed a man under 18 to obtain permission from a judge to be married if it would prevent a child he fathered from being born out of wedlock. That allowance was quickly repealed in 1961.

The distinction between sexes was eliminated in 1975, and no changes have happened since.

In 2018, as the #MeToo movement against powerful, abusive men was gaining momentum, Delaware and New Jersey became the first states to ban child marriage. Fifteen more states have since followed suit, including Minnesota and Michigan. Bans on child marriage have been introduced multiple times since 2019 in Wisconsin.

Numbers decline, but not to zero

Statistics paint a picture of how this practice has declined over time in the state.

According to the nonpartisan Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau, 27 minors were married in Wisconsin in 2024: eight 16-year-olds and 19 17-year-olds. That figure represents a steep drop from a peak of 421 child marriages in 1995.

Between 2010 and 2022, the vast majority of minors who married did so with adult spouses. From 2017 through 2019, every single minor who married in Wisconsin did so with an adult.

And from 1995 through 2013 (the last year for which gender data is available) girls made up the overwhelming majority of minors who married. In 2013, 23 16-year-old girls married, compared to just two boys the same age. Among 17-year-olds that year, the ratio was 39 girls to eight boys.

According to advocacy group Unchained At Last, those numbers are consistent with nationwide trends. The vast majority of minors married in the country are girls. Most of those girls married an adult male with the man on average being four years older.

“One of the things we wanted to look at is that, you know, is this young love? Is this two teenagers getting married?” Spreitzer said. “The answer seems to be primarily no. Primarily this is men over the age of 18, marrying girls under the age of 18. So that really heightened the concern.”

The law also includes a surprising twist: You can get married under 18, but you can’t get divorced.

Current law gives some provisions for minors to get an annulment, but there is no explicit statutory right for a married minor to file for divorce. Spreitzer and Roe’s proposed legislation would allow any minors married before their proposal takes effect to get a divorce.

Republicans oppose ban based on parental rights

Spreitzer and Roe’s legislation would prohibit marriage under 18 in all circumstances. More than a dozen states have passed similar outright bans over the years.

The Wisconsin effort was once bipartisan. Republican Reps. Ken Skowronski, R-Franklin, and Chuck Wichgers, R-Muskego, were co-sponsors of the bill as recently as 2020. That support has since evaporated.

In February 2024, former state Rep. John Macco, R-Ledgeview, sent a 2:59 a.m. reply-all email to fellow legislators linking the child marriage ban with restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors — a conflation that bill authors and advocates rejected.

“If you’re really serious about protecting minors I’ll add an amendment to also protect them from sex altering drugs and surgery and then cosponsor with you,” Macco’s email read.

Wichgers declined to comment on his previous support.

For a bill to pass into law, identical versions must pass the Assembly and Senate. After a bill is introduced, leadership in both chambers refers their respective versions to a relevant committee where it may receive a hearing and vote. If a committee chair never schedules a bill hearing, it can wallow until the legislative session ends.

During the most recent legislative session, the Senate and Assembly child marriage bills sat in committees led by state Sen. Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield, and state Rep. Patrick Snyder, R-Weston. The bills died without a committee hearing, just like in past sessions.

Kapenga said he sees no reason to act.

“I cannot recall one constituent phone call or interaction where this issue has come up. I don’t have a problem with the current law that allows a 16- and 17-year-old to marry in the state of Wisconsin as long as there is consent from the parent or guardian. Parents know what’s best for their child — not the government,” he said.

Kapenga’s staff confirmed he has not received constituent contacts opposing child marriage, but other Wisconsin legislators, both Republicans and Democrats, have been contacted, according to public records.

Kapenga invoked a broader political philosophy to explain his position. “Frankly, we’ve seen an erosion of parents’ rights over the years by those on the left who believe that it’s the job of government to parent children,” he said. “Given the very low numbers of minors impacted, I do not believe this warrants the passage of this legislation.”

Cathy Myers, a spokesperson for Zonta of Janesville, a women’s advocacy group that worked with Spreitzer on the bill, said the decline in child marriage over time doesn’t justify ignoring the issue.

“We believe this is a pretty easy issue to wrap your head around,” she said. “One child married is one too many.” 

Snyder didn’t respond to a request for comment. Senate President Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk, deferred to Kapenga’s comments. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, did not respond to requests for comment.

Advocates say they hear from supportive Republicans

Spreitzer and Roe said they have heard privately from Republican colleagues who agree

with the goal of ending child marriage, but will not say so publicly.

“I think there are many people across the aisle on several different issues, this being one of them …they nod their heads, they look at me, they’re like, ‘We get it, this is an issue,'” Roe said. “And I think when hopefully they feel less obligated to fall into lockstep with their current leadership, I think that offers us an opportunity to have better conversations and figure out how we can work together.”

Spreitzer said he hopes that some of the Republicans who believe in banning child marriage “would start moving that conversation forward within their own party. That’s how we build progress.”

Myers said her organization heard from supportive Republicans during a lobby day at the Capitol this year.

“Several legislators said they didn’t know that children could be married until we met with them,” Myers said. “However, several also said that until they get the green light from their leadership, the bill would not get to the floor and would not become law.”

Child marriage has long-term consequences

Advocates say the consequences for girls are lasting. Roe described a possible trajectory: a teenage girl, newly married to an older man, denied the normal social activities of a 16-year-old and cut off from educational and career opportunities.

“The intentions of that older man are not to establish more freedoms for this young woman,” Roe said. “This is a form of potentially trafficking. This is a form of dominance. That’s just not healthy.”

Studies have linked child marriage among girls to poor mental health outcomes, diminished educational opportunity and higher rates of poverty.

Lauren Papp, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of human development and family studies who studies intimate relationships and family dynamics, said adolescence is the wrong time to make a permanent legal commitment to another person — not because teenagers are incapable, but because they are still becoming who they will be.

Papp disagreed that parental consent provides a safeguard because parents may not be privy to all of the relationship dynamics. She, Roe and Spreitzer all noted there can be an imbalance in power dynamics between a child spouse and an older partner who is legally an adult.

“That is certainly just an extra layer of dependence on others,” she said. “There’s a whole host of ways that the younger person could be disadvantaged.”

Child marriage with parental consent is still legal in Wisconsin. Republicans have blocked Democratic efforts to change that. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.