Trump’s FY2027 Budget Targets International Family Planning Funding, Another Betrayal of 60 Years of U.S. Global Leadership

PAI calls the proposal a part of a continuing assault on contraceptive services, threatening the health and lives of women and families worldwide 

Today, President Trump released his budget request for fiscal year 2027, proposing dramatic cuts to global health, and made note that the administration does not believe U.S. funding should support “unfettered access to birth control.” The proposal represents a dramatic abandonment of a U.S. financial commitment to international family planning and reproductive health funding (FP/RH) that has remained stable across administrations of presidents of both parties and through budget and political pressures for more than 16 consecutive fiscal years, including last year, when the overall international affairs budget absorbed a 16 percent cut. 

The President’s Budget Request has become a statement of an administration’s spending priorities that Congress routinely ignores. But as a statement of policy, the administration is sending an unmistakable signal with this request: women’s health and reproductive rights are of zero importance to this administration. 

“This budget proposal is both a betrayal of decades of American leadership and a direct threat to the women and families whose lives greatly benefit from U.S. support for family planning and maternal health,” said PAI’s Senior Fellow, U.S. Government Relations, Craig Lasher. “Gutting this funding does not reflect American values, nor does it serve American interests. Congress has a long history of rightly treating international family planning as a bipartisan priority, and we urge them to do so again.”

The budget proposes a massive cut — $4.3 billion dollars less towards global health programs than last year’s enacted budget — that will surely damage already struggling health systems. This is the latest in a series of actions by this administration that have dismantled U.S. investment in global reproductive health. The administration has moved to destroy an estimated $10 million in taxpayer-funded contraceptive supplies, blatantly wasting the American people’s hard-earned dollars; defunded UNFPA, the UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency serving more than 150 countries; and both reinstated and dramatically expanded the Global Gag Rule. The newest expansion of the Global Gag Rule goes beyond abortion services and now targets what the administration terms “gender ideology” and “discriminatory equity ideology” activities, which will significantly worsen the policy’s already-documented harms: maternal deaths, clinic closures, disruptions of supply chains, and programming that helps the most vulnerable women and girls around the world survive and thrive. 

The justification given for proposing massive cuts to global health programming is incoherent and includes examples of work the Trump administration will not support, which are the type of birth control education and services that are routinely available and used by American women.

While the Trump administration is slashing — if not zeroing out for the second year in a row — requested funding for lifesaving FP/RH programs, PAI and our fellow advocates are pushing the U.S. to increase funding to $2.11 billion — three-and-a-half times the FY 2026 congressionally-appropriated level of $607.5 million. This amount accounts for the U.S. “fair share” of the global cost of continuing care for 714 million women currently using modern contraception and to meet the current unmet demand for contraception of 78 million women in low- and middle-income countries. 

The United States has been a leader in family planning and maternal health for decades, and as a result, millions of lives around the world have been changed for the better. PAI urges Congress to reject this proposal, reassert its constitutional “power of the purse,” and fully fund international FP/RH, reaffirming America’s commitment to the health, rights, and futures of women and families around the world.