Report

Public Funding for Family Planning, Sterilization and Abortion Services, FY 1980 – 2010
Adam Sonfield and Rachel Benson Gold

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Key Points

• Public expenditures for family planning client services totaled $2.37 billion in FY 2010, supporting the provision of contraceptive drugs and devices, client counseling and education, and tests and treatment, including for STIs.

• Medicaid accounted for 75% of the total, whereas state-only sources accounted for 12% and Title X accounted for 10%.

• Total public funding rose 31% from FY 1980 to FY 2010, adjusted for inflation, with almost all of the increase coming from Medicaid. Title X expenditures fell 71%. n Public spending on sterilization services totaled $93 million, 95% of which was through Medicaid.

• The states spent $68 million on about 181,000 abortion procedures for low-income women in FY 2010, almost all of it in the 17 states that use their own funds to pay for most or all medically necessary abortions provided to Medicaid recipients. The federal government, which restricts funding to cases of life endangerment, rape and incest, contributed to the cost of only 331 of those procedures.

1. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Office of Population Affairs, Family planning program: FY 2010 service program grants by state, Washington, DC: DHHS, 2011. 2. Guttmacher Institute, Medicaid family planning eligibility expansions, State Policies in Brief (as of April 2010), 2010, , accessed Apr. 8, 2010. 3. Guttmacher Institute, Medicaid family planning eligibility expansions, State Policies in Brief (as of January 1, 2012), 2012, , accessed Jan. 9, 2012. 4. 42 CFR 441.250–259. 5. Guttmacher Institute, State funding of abortion under Medicaid, State Policies in Brief (as of April 1, 2010), , accessed Apr. 8, 2010. 6. Sonfield A, Alrich C and Gold RB, Public funding for family planning, sterilization and abortion services, FY 1980–2006, Occasional Report, New York: Guttmacher Institute, 2008, No. 38. 7. Sonfield A and Gold RB, Public Funding for Contraceptive, Sterilization and Abortion Services, FY 1980–2001, New York: Guttmacher Institute, 2005, , accessed Sept. 5, 2007. 8. Sollom T, Gold RB and Saul R, Public funding for contraception, sterilization and abortion services, 1994, Family Planning Perspectives, 1996, 28(4):166–173. 9. Daley D and Gold RB, Public funding for contraceptive, sterilization and abortion services, fiscal year 1992, Family Planning Perspectives, 1993, 25(6):244–251. 10. Gold RB and Daley D, Public funding of family planning services, sterilization and abortion services, 1990, Family Planning Perspectives, 1991, 23(5):204–211. 11. Gold RB and Guardado S, Public funding of family planning, sterilization and abortion services, 1987, Family Planning Perspectives, 1988, 20(5):228–233. 12. Gold RB and Macias J, Public funding of contraceptive, sterilization and abortion services, 1985, Family Planning Perspectives, 1986, 18(6):259–264. 13. Gold RB and Nestor B, Public funding of contraceptive, sterilization and abortion services, 1983, Family Planning Perspectives, 1985, 17(1):25–30. 

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Global

United States

Geography