The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is awarding nearly $700,000 taxpayer dollars to back pregnancy prevention programs for young girls who identify as boys, warning that “heteronormative” sexual education is inadequate.
The $698,736 grant, which began in September 2023 and will continue until June 2027, according to government disclosures, will be allocated to the Center for Innovative Public Health Research, a non-profit that seeks to create “an inclusive teen pregnancy program for transgender boys.”
“Youth who are assigned female at birth … 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,” the award description claims.
“Data suggest that AFAB [assigned female at birth] trans-identified youth may be less likely to use condoms when having sex with people who have penises and are at least as likely as cisgender girls to be pregnant,” it goes on to say before adding that the “health inequity must be addressed.”