Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher (TX-07), Congresswoman Judy Chu (CA-28), Congresswoman Sharice Davids (KS-03), Congresswoman Dina Titus (NV-01), and Congresswoman Nikema Williams (GA-05) led 128 of their Democratic Women’s Caucus and Reproductive Freedom Caucus colleagues in sending a letter to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy urging him to immediately award a one-year full funding extension to all current Title X grantees.  This extension is critical because HHS failed to release the funding guidelines for months, only to release them late last Friday and give applicants only one week to submit their materials.  Title X-funded health centers are lifelines in their communities, providing high-quality family planning and sexual health care, including cancer screenings, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, HIV testing, contraceptive services and supplies, pregnancy testing, and other essential health care services.

“The bipartisan Title X program, championed by then-Congressman George H.W. Bush and signed into law by President Nixon, served 2.8 million people in 2023,” the members wrote.  “For many of those patients, especially in rural and under-served communities, Title X health centers are their only source of health care.  In 2023 alone, Title X supported 3,853 health centers across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories and performed 461,085 cervical cancer screenings.  These screenings have helped lower cervical cancer rates by more than half since the mid-1970s.  In a time when maternal mortality rates are increasing in states across the country, we know that one-third of annual maternal deaths could be prevented if women had effective contraception, and nearly three quarters of women begin or continue a contraceptive method after going to a Title X–funded clinic.  Timely access to the Year 5 funding of grants, already awarded, is essential for Title X clinics to continue to provide these screenings, contraceptive supplies, and other critical services.”

“The failure to release guidance and open applications on time is yet another example of this administration’s ongoing assault on the Title X program, birth control, and reproductive health care access more broadly,” the members continued.  “In March 2025, HHS illegally withheld $65.8 million in Congressionally appropriated funding for the Title X program from 16 grantees with grants in 23 states, threatening essential health care access for an estimated 842,000 people, or 30 percent of all Title X patients.  Many of these affected grantees still struggle to sustain the financial burden caused by that extended delay in funding.  The attacks on reproductive health care from this administration and congressional Republicans continued with an estimated 15 million Americans poised to lose health insurance under Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Republicans’ failure to extend Affordable Care Act tax credits, and a budget proposal and partisan spending bill for FY2026 that sought to eliminate the Title X program entirely.”

“Undermining Title X will unquestionably result in the loss of health care for patients who depend on it,” the members concluded.  “Title X grantees were already awarded these funds.  Those who rely on these services should not be punished by HHS’s inadequate planning.  We urge you to award all Title X grantees a full funding extension for the next year before April 1.  Do not stifle the life-saving work of Title X-funded centers that have helped women and families across our country for decades.”

In October, Congresswoman Fletcher sent a letter to Secretary Kennedy urging the Trump administration to reverse course after it fired nearly the entire staff at the Office of Population Affairs, which administers the Title X program.  In April and June, Congresswoman Fletcher sent letters to Secretary Kennedy urging him to restore funding for Title X that Congress had previously set aside for the program but that the Trump administration froze.

To read the full text of today’s letter, click here.