Birth control funding program

For nearly half a century, the Title X Family Planning Program has been a crucial source of federal dollars for family planning and related health care services for low-income Americans. Enacted with bipartisan support in 1970, the program’s mandate to provide “a broad range of acceptable and effective family planning methods and services” has helped millions of lower-income women each year obtain contraceptives and take control of their destinies, at least in terms of deciding if and when to have children.

In 2015, according to a federal government report, more than 4 million patients (the vast majority of them women) got health care through Title X funds, including screening for breast and cervical cancers and sexually transmitted diseases.

Researchers at the Guttmacher Institute, which supports reproductive rights, estimates that Title X care helped women avoid more than 800,000 unintended pregnancies that year.

The program has survived numerous changes of administrations over the decades, carrying out its mission relatively unscathed by politics.