Biden admin allocates $700K for pregnancy prevention program for girls who identify as boys

The Biden administration’s Department of Health and Human Services has spent $700,000 on a sex education program tailored to preventing pregnancy in young women who identify as transgender boys. 

The project grant, which began in September 2023, will not expire until June 2027.

The recipient of the HHS funds is the California-based Center for Innovative Public Health Research (CiPHR), which describes itself as a “non-profit, public health research incubator founded under the previous name, Internet Solutions for Kids, Inc.”

The group carries out LGBT-related studies and projects, including publications on topics such as “A mixed-methods study of condom use and decision making among adolescent gay and bisexual males” and “Girl2Girl: How to develop a salient pregnancy prevention program for cisgender sexual minority adolescent girls.”

“Youth who are Assigned Female at Birth (AFAB) and identify as transgender (e.g., as non-binary or as trans boys), not as girls, are at risk for negative sexual health outcomes yet are effectively excluded from sexual health programs because gender-diverse youth do not experience the cisgender, heteronormative teen sexual education messaging available to them as salient or applicable,” says the description for the HHS-funded project. 

The description goes on to say data reveals that “AFAB trans-identified youth may be less likely to use condoms when having sex with” males and are “at least as likely as cisgender girls to be pregnant.” The latter statement is notably unsurprising, as there is no biological difference between “AFAB trans-identified youth” and “cisgender” girls. 

This new project is not the first time that the Biden administration has directed funds towards separate sex education resources for adolescents who identify as LGBT. The administration began funding an additional project in September 2023 for the purpose of creating an “online interactive sexual education tool” for this population. 

HHS has shelled out $240,000 to Seattle Children’s Hospital for the project titled, “An intervention to promote healthy relationships among transgender and gender expansive youth.”  

“Transgender and gender expansive (TGE) youth identify as a gender different from their sex at birth. Research tends to define this group based on high rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), sexual risk behaviors, violence exposures, and other health outcomes,” the description explains, concluding that the project “will result in the first evidence- and strengths-based online sexual health intervention for TGE youth.” 

Seattle Children’s Hospital is a known provider of body-altering surgeries for minors who identify as transgender. The Gender Clinic at the hospital publicly states that it accepts children “ages 9 to 16” and offers children puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones many critics call dangerous and unproven.