The Trump administration has laid off a significant number of employees from the Office of Population Affairs (OPA) during the ongoing Democrat-led government shutdown, effectively gutting an agency long used by Democrats to promote abortion and gender ideology. According to The New York Times, nearly the entire OPA staff was locked out of their government email accounts last week before being notified they were subject to a “reduction in force.”
The OPA, a sub-agency within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has existed for over five decades and historically focused on issues like family planning, teen pregnancy, sterilization, and population research. Under President Joe Biden, the agency was used to expand Title X abortion access and even fund transgender services for minors.
Trump officials say the layoffs are part of broader efforts to eliminate non-essential federal positions and refocus resources on pro-life and pro-family priorities. HHS Press Secretary Emily Hilliard confirmed that the affected staff were all deemed “non-essential” by their divisions.
A federal judge issued a temporary injunction Wednesday blocking widespread layoffs of federal workers during the shutdown, but it remains unclear whether OPA employees are covered by that order. In the meantime, reproductive health advocates, including former Biden-era deputy assistant secretary Jessica Marcella, are warning that abortion-related services will be severely impacted.
“The high-quality, confidential care they have relied on may disappear overnight,” Marcella said, referring to programs that included abortion referrals and sex-change advocacy under the Title X banner.
However, sources told Breitbart News that the OPA’s closure will not halt all its operations. Trump administration officials are expected to reassign infertility-related efforts to another agency, part of a broader policy pivot to address America’s declining birthrate rather than promote population control.
The administration has also proposed eliminating the Title X program entirely in its 2026 budget, further signaling the end of federally supported abortion-related initiatives.
While Democrats decry the move as a blow to “reproductive health,” Trump supporters view it as a long-overdue step toward ending taxpayer funding of abortion and dismantling decades-old bureaucracies entrenched in left-wing social policy.
