Trump administration lays off staff of HHS Office of Population Affairs
‘People will lose access to the quality, subsidized care that they rely on from the providers that they trust,’ said a former Biden administration employee.
The federal office that manages funding for much of the nation’s reproductive health and family planning has evidently been gutted by President Donald Trump’s administration, potentially jeopardizing access to care.
Jessica Marcella, who served as the deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in President Joe Biden’s administration, told the American Independent on Oct. 15 that she had heard from her former colleagues at the Office of Population Affairs on Oct. 10 that all but one of its 50 or so employees had lost access to their work email accounts.
The Office of Population Affairs, which operates under the Department of Health and Human Services, is responsible for administering the Title X Family Planning Program, established in 1970. The program funds health clinics such as those operated by Planned Parenthood, which provide a broad range of family planning and preventive health services for lower-income individuals who are without insurance or underinsured.
The OPA also conducts research and provides expert policy advice to HHS officials.
Marcella said that at first the staff was unsure whether it was “a glitch or their signal that they had lost their job.” On Oct. 15, she said, “Finally, officially, today, someone got a message that functionally said, you know, OPA employees whose email access has been suspended are subject to a reduction in force, and that official notices had been sent out.”
The one staff member who was not told they had lost their job, Marcella said, was the staff’s officer of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, the health service’s uniformed service branch, who she said is subject to a different HR process.
“This action demonstrates, yet again, a lack of basic decency,” Marcella said. “These people are hardworking, well-qualified public servants that serve our nation, and they should not be treated like this. You should not have to wait 72 hours to get official confirmation that you lost your job.”
On the same day the Population Affairs Office workers were locked out of their accounts, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sent out reduction-in-force notices to around 1,700 workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the news website Government Executive reported. HHS claimed around 700 had been sent erroneously due to “data discrepancies and processing errors.” Those layoffs were rescinded a day later, Government Executive reported.
“Communities across the country, they rely on the ability, the capacity and the expertise of the staff of that office to make sure that money flows into the communities that need them, that patients get the high-quality client-centered care that they deserve, that those who are managing the programs have the technical assistance and support that they need to do so with not only fidelity, but integrity, and that at the foundation of this is about dignity and respect for reproductive health,” Marcella said.
Lawmakers and activists who oppose abortion have long attacked Title X on the grounds that it funds abortions. But the reality is that federal funding of abortion has been prohibited under the Hyde Amendment, a restriction included in annual federal spending bills since 1976, except in cases of medical emergencies in which a pregnant woman’s life is at stake.
Title X funds family planning programs run by many state health departments, Marcella explained, paying for contraception, the salaries of the nursing staff and other clinicians, and evidence-based sex education programs funded under the OPA’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program.
“If there is not someone who can put out the guidance that allows organizations and communities to apply, there’s no one who is there to move the funds and to make sure that the program is upheld, then what we will see in the months to come is that there’s no funding for the program that is pushed out into communities, and that people will lose access to the quality, subsidized care that they rely on from the providers that they trust,” Marcella said.
During his 2024 general election campaign, Trump promised he would either force the federal government to pay for patients’ in vitro fertilization treatments or insist that private health insurance companies cover them, even referring to himself at one point as “the father of IVF.”
But with no staff, there will be no one to administer the three grant programs managed by the Office of Population Affairs that help families afford and access fertility care.
Marcella says the administration has shifted its position from root cause infertility and restorative reproductive medicine to blaming infertility on lifestyle choices or environmental toxins. In July, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy made inaccurate claims about male fertility. And in September, the Trump administration claimed without evidence that autism is caused by the use of Tylenol during pregnancy.
She says by doing that, “You take out of the conversation people like same-sex couples or individuals without partners who want to expand their families in such a way that it may be less noticeable, but that’s really what’s happening. … This entire pro-natalist agenda is about how you only value certain types of families.”
