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Two organizations with anti-abortion ties will receive major reproductive health grants, a source at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) tells Autonomy News. Both awards appear in a public database.
The grants will fund training centers intended to support organizations receiving funds from the Title X program, the only federal family planning initiative for low-income people. Since 1970, it has provided birth control, pregnancy testing and options counseling, and STI testing to uninsured or underinsured clients. The Trump administration has refocused Title X to promote childbearing—and proposed ending it altogether.
Last year, as part of its quest to promote pregnancy, the Trump administration introduced a new grant to develop a national “infertility training center.” This $4 million grant was awarded to FACTS About Fertility, a Pennsylvania-based organization that purports to educate medical professionals about fertility awareness-based methods (FABMs) of family planning. FACTS also received an additional $500,000 in “system improvement” funds.
FACTS was cofounded and is run by Marguerite Duane, a family medicine physician with links to far-right groups including the Heritage Foundation, the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs, and the Charlotte Lozier Institute—the dubious “research” arm of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, the nation’s largest anti-abortion group.
Duane is also a leading advocate for “restorative reproductive medicine” (RRM), which conservative and MAHA groups alike have presented as an alternative to in vitro fertilization. This approach involves using FABMs to help promote pregnancy, as well as surgical interventions and other treatments. Duane is currently an associate professor of RRM at Duquesne University Nasuti College of Osteopathic Medicine, where she directs the Center for Fertility Awareness Education and Research.
Leading medical groups are critical of RRM: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says it may actually delay conception, while the American Society of Reproductive Medicine has said it “is simply fertility medicine minus key tools like IVF, which, for some, represents the only way to build a family.”
A second major award will go to another organization run by an RRM advocate. Since 2006, the University of Missouri’s Clinical Training Center for Sexual and Reproductive Health provided training and other resources for the nation’s Title X workforce, which served nearly 3 million patients annually in 2023. But the center’s funding ran out at the end of September after the Trump administration did not renew it. A $3 million, two-year grant to establish a new national training center for family planning is set for a Georgia-based organization called Reproductive Health Mission. The organization also received an additional $1.28 million in funds for public health service evaluation and system improvements.
According to Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data, Reproductive Health Mission has never taken in more than $50,000 in a single year since gaining tax-exempt status in 2021. Its website doesn’t list any staff, but according to IRS records, its chief executive is Nicholas Kongoasa, a gynecologic surgeon.
Kongoasa serves as chief medical officer of two practices, Reproductive Health Medicine and Gynecology, and the Center for Restorative Reproductive Health Surgery. Kongoasa is also currently listed as a medical director of ultrasounds for an anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy center” chain in Georgia.
He also has a history of discouraging the use of hormonal birth control, and appears in a provider directory hosted by the FEMM fertility app, which was funded by anti-abortion billionaire Sean Fieler. He was previously a medical reviewer for articles on the anti-abortion site Natural Womanhood, and one such article promotes the unproven and potentially dangerous theory of abortion pill “reversal.”
Like all other recent HHS grant guidelines, these funding opportunities required applicants to “align” their proposals with agency priorities, which include ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, denying the existence of transgender people, excluding abortion access resources, and protecting “parental rights to direct the religious upbringing of their children.”
Autonomy News has contacted HHS, FACTS, and Reproductive Health Mission for comment and will update this story if we hear back.
This story was edited by Susan Rinkunas and copy edited and fact checked by Hannah McAlilly.
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