Reproductive Equity Now Slams New Hampshire House Budget’s Elimination of Family Planning Program
CONCORD (April 10, 2025) – Today, New Hampshire’s House of Representatives rejected an amendment brought forth by Minority Leader Alexis Simpson that would have reinstated funding in the upcoming biennial state budget for the New Hampshire Family Planning Program, a program with a 53-year history of providing low-cost, preventative sexual and reproductive health care to thousands of Granite Staters.
“The decision by the House Majority to advance a state budget that eliminates the New Hampshire Family Planning Program is both misguided and morally bankrupt,” said Christina Warriner, New Hampshire State Director for Reproductive Equity Now. “By gutting funding that makes access to birth control, cancer screenings, and STI testing affordable for thousands of our most vulnerable neighbors, Granite Staters’ ability to make decisions about their health, well-being, and family building will be restricted. Once again, our trusted community-based health centers will be asked to do more with less. We call upon the Senate to fully reject this effort to dismantle the New Hampshire Family Planning Program and prioritize the health of all their constituents.”
New Hampshire has one of lowest teen pregnancy rates in the nation, due largely to the availability of preventative services to those who need it most provided through this program. In 2022, New Hampshire saw the highest incidence of gonorrhea and syphilis ever recorded. Currently, there are seven health care sites across the state that are providers in the New Hampshire Family Planning Program.
Since July of 2021, New Hampshire’s independent sexual and reproductive health providers, Lovering Health Center of Greenland and Equality Health Center of Concord, as well as the state’s largest sexual and reproductive health provider, Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, have been denied participation in the New Hampshire Family Planning Program by the Executive Council. 4 out of 5 Executive Councilors have repeatedly amplified anti-abortion disinformation and refused to use Family Planning funds to support clinics that provide abortion care, despite multiple audits from the Department of Health and Human Services affirming that family planning dollars do not contribute to abortion care provided at these clinics.
In March, Reproductive Equity Now released a statement, alongside Lovering Health Center of Greenland and Equality Health Center of Concord, after House Finance Committee Division III first approved an amendment to the state budget to eliminate the New Hampshire Family Planning Program.
