What Exactly Is Title X Funding?

Title X, the only federal grant program dedicated solely to family planning and reproductive health services for low-income and uninsured patients, has nothing to do with abortion.

But House Republicans have said limiting abortions is the primary reason for their proposal to cut more than $300 million from Title X for the rest of fiscal 2011, even though abortion is explicitly excluded from the program's coverage.

Ironically, cutting Title X funding might actually increase the incidence of abortions. Family planning services at Title X-funded clinics helped prevent 973,00 unintended pregnancies in 2008, which would have caused more that 400,000 unintended births and more than 400,000 abortions, according to areport by the Guttmacher Institute released that year.