For the life of me, I don’t understand why the federal government is in the family planning business. Eugenics is so 1930s and Margaret-Sanger-ish. And in a nation with an aging population with a fertility rate that is in negative population growth range, too many kids is not one of our biggest problems. I kid. I kid. The Title X Family Planning money exist for one reason. It is a cash cow for the abortion industry.

BREAKING: A @USGAO report I requested in 2016 on @PPFA reveals more than $1.5 BILLION in taxpayer $ is going to the big abortion industry. Abortion is not family planning. Abortion is family destruction & the American people deserve better. #DefundPP https://t.co/TVll8uPz3o

— Diane Black (@RepDianeBlack) March 8, 2018

Times they are a changing:

A senior Trump health official who has promoted abstinence will be the final arbiter of which groups receive federal family planning funds — a change from prior years, when a group of officials made the decision, POLITICO has learned.

Conservatives have long criticized the $286 million Title X program, which funds family planning services, mostly for low-income women, because it gives money to Planned Parenthood and other groups that provide abortions, even though there is a prohibition on using those dollars for abortions.

Now, for the first time since 1987, the final decision of who gets the funding will be in the hands of one person — Valerie Huber, the acting deputy assistant secretary for population affairs at HHS, a longtime advocate of abstinence.

Prior to joining the Trump administration, Huber was president and CEO of Ascend, a national organization that promoted “sexual risk avoidance” — a term she used instead of abstinence — among young people. Huber also managed the Ohio Department of Health’s sexual risk avoidance program from 2004 to 2007.

Women’s health advocates on the other side of the debate fear that the Trump administration will funnel money away from groups that provide contraception and toward crisis pregnancy centers that oppose abortion or groups that promote abstinence-only education.

“This is unprecedented, and has dangerous implications,” said Kashif Syed, a senior analyst at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “We’re talking about a program that 4 million people rely on for basic reproductive health care — or in many cases, their only form of health care. Now is not the time to play politics with people’s lives — but that’s exactly what the Trump-Pence administration is doing.”

Planned Parenthood treats about 41 percent of Title X patients but did not say how much total funding it gets through the program.

A big believer in abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, Valerie Huber has been orchestrating attacks on the nation's teen pregnancy programs. https://t.co/lDyTZlZxeR pic.twitter.com/MUSwixUV9H

— Planned Parenthood Action (@PPact) November 12, 2017

Before coming to HHS, Valerie Huber ran an organization promoting abstinence only until marriage. Guess what’s happening to the nation’s public family-planning funds? https://t.co/xWngWwlsxh @chgrimaldi on the fate of #TitleX funding

— Rewire.News (@Rewire_News) March 8, 2018

I just want to marry this whole article.

Not only am I personally hostile to the existence of Planned Parenthood and Title X funding, I’m not a believer in “safe sex” education or distributing contraceptives on the hope that they will be used. We don’t teach “safe drunk and driving” and “save intravenous drug use” for good reason. We understand that drunk driving and shooting up are high-risk activities that should be discouraged. Likewise with teenage promiscuity. If we approach this from the standpoint of a) premarital sex is great and b) here’s how to do it, then, unsurprisingly, you’re going to end up encouraging a high-risk behavior. As Nancy Reagan said, “Just say no.” Because if you won’t say “no” then nothing else really matters.

This was made possible by two things. First off, the appointment of an unabashed pro-life activist. Second, the appointment of an HHS secretary who not only cared about the issue but had the guts to make an internal policy change to place this funding decision outside the reach of Planned Parenthood’s network of influencers. All of this was brought about by a guy who is “New York liberal Democrat.”