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The Title X national family planning program and Medicaid, the joint federal-state health insurance program for low-income Americans, form the core of support for family planning services. Medicaid is the primary source of financial support and accounts for more than 70% of the funding. Title X accounts for 12% of funding for publicly funded contraceptive services in part by meeting clinics’ ongoing infrastructure needs in ways that Medicaid cannot.[11]

More than 17 million women aged 13–44 are considered to be in need because they are at risk for unintended pregnancy and have incomes below 250% of the federal poverty level, or because they are younger than 20 years old and are assumed to have a low personal income.[8]

Publicly funded family planning services reach more than nine million women each year, helping to avert about two million unintended pregnancies (including 400,000 teen pregnancies) that would have resulted in about 860,000 unplanned births, 810,000 abortions and 270,000 miscarriages. Without these services, the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions occurring in the United States would be nearly two-thirds higher among women overall and among teens; the number of unintended pregnancies among poor women would nearly double.[11]

There are more than 8,000 publicly funded family planning clinics nationwide, and about half are supported in part by the federal Title X program.[11]

The lives of more than 1.5 million newborns and 250,000 women in the developing world would be saved each year. More than 50 million fewer women would experience unintended pregnancies, lowering the cost of providing maternal and newborn health services. Thus, fully funding both of these services simultaneously actually lowers net costs.[21]

Since more than nine in 10 women receiving these services would be eligible for Medicaid-funded care if they became pregnant, avoiding the significant costs associated with these unintended births saves taxpayers $4 for every $1 spent on family planning.[11]