At least 20 Planned Parenthood clinics shutter amid political turbulence

The Guardian

3 days ago

At least 20 Planned Parenthood clinics across seven states have shuttered since the start of 2025 or have announced plans to close soon – closures that come amid immense financial and political turbulence for the reproductive health giant as the United States continues to grapple with the fallout from the end of Roe v Wade.
The Planned Parenthood network, which operates nearly 600 clinics through a web of independent regional affiliates and is overseen by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, is facing a number of threats from the Trump administration. A Guardian analysis has found that Planned Parenthood closures have occurred or are in the works across six affiliates that maintain clinics in Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Utah and Vermont.
In late March, the Trump administration suddenly froze tens of millions of dollars in funding for nine Planned Parenthood affiliates, including at least two that have since closed clinics or are set to do so soon. The funding, which flowed from the federal family planning program Title X, was used to provide services such as contraception, cancer screenings and STI tests.
'The ways in which this administration is dismantling access to public health and public health information are really troubling and, frankly, force us to make these difficult decisions very quickly,' said Shireen Ghorbani, interim president of Planned Parenthood Association of Utah, which saw $2.8m of its Title X funding – 20% of the affiliate's budget – frozen under the Trump administration. It has since closed two clinics as well as laid off a number of staffers who worked on initiatives like sex education.
Last year, Ghorbani said, 26,000 Utahns received Title X-funded care at Planned Parenthood. Ghorbani does not believe that Utah's Republican-controlled state legislature will step in to create a substitute program.
'I will be shocked if a single cent is spent to make sure that people are able to control their health and their sexual and reproductive lives,' she said.
Planned Parenthood's financial woes have raised eyebrows for some advocates of abortion rights and reproductive health. The organization has weathered several crises, including allegations of mismanagement, in the years since Roe collapsed – but as the face of US abortion access it continued to rake in donations. (Most abortions in the US are in fact performed by small 'independent' clinics, which are grappling with their own financial turmoil.) As of June 2023, the Planned Parenthood network had about $3bn in assets, according to its 2024 report.
In April, Planned Parenthood of Michigan's announced that it would cut its staffing by 10% and close four clinics. Viktoria Koskenoja, an emergency medicine doctor who worked at one of the clinics that has closed, said that the closures came as 'a real shock'.
'It's sort of a frantic scramble right now to figure out where these patients are going to be able to go,' said Koskenoja, who lives in Michigan's rural Upper Peninsula. 'People are just going to get worse care for the time being, until we can figure something out.'
She added: 'I think that if they had asked for money from the community to keep it open, people would have donated.'
In a press release, Planned Parenthood of Michigan attributed the closures and layoffs to 'historic threats and cuts to federal funding'. The cuts to Title X, it said, 'deal a devastating financial blow to healthcare providers like PPMI'.
But Planned Parenthood of Michigan was not among the Planned Parenthood affiliates that saw their Title X funding frozen. In Michigan, the federal government distributes Title X funding to the state's department of health and human services, which in turn doles money out to clinics, including those run by Planned Parenthood of Michigan. The Michigan department of health and human services has not seen a disruption in Title X funding.
Planned Parenthood of Michigan did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the clinic closures and the role of Title X in those closures.
The squeeze the organization is navigating may be about to tighten. Republicans at the national level are ramping up their campaign to 'defund' Planned Parenthood by kicking it out of Medicaid, the government insurance program for low-income people. Of the 2.4 million people treated at Planned Parenthood nationwide each year, nearly half rely on Medicaid.
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Additionally, the supreme court is weighing a case involving an attempt by South Carolina to remove Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid program over the organization's status as an abortion provider. If the high court greenlights South Carolina's move, it could pave the way for other red states to refuse to reimburse Planned Parenthood for Medicaid costs.
In Congress, Republicans' 'one big beautiful' tax bill, which has passed the House of Representatives and is now being considered in the Senate, also includes a provision that would effectively bar organizations that offer abortions from receiving Medicaid reimbursements for other reproductive health services. The provision is so narrowly tailored – it only applies to organizations that received more than $1m in Medicaid reimbursements – that it would only affect Planned Parenthood.
'Plain and simple, this reconciliation bill is about attacking Planned Parenthood,' Alexis McGill Johnson, CEO and president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement.
If the tax bill passes as is, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York would lose about $20m and be forced to close clinics, according to Wendy Stark, the affiliate's CEO and president.
'Here we are, a few years post-Dobbs, and you're seeing health providers in [abortion] access states really struggle financially,' Stark said, referring to Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health, the supreme court decision that overturned Roe. 'That's not an accident, right? What's going on currently with the administration has been layered on top of existing threats and challenges.'
Planned Parenthood of Greater New York is currently looking to sell its only Manhattan clinic. Medicaid and private insurance reimbursement rates, Stark said, were already too low, especially as the costs of medical supplies, insurance and rent have all risen in the years since the Covid pandemic. Last year, it cost the affiliate about $67m to provide healthcare services, but it only received about $36m in insurance reimbursements, she added.
It shuttered four clinics in 2024.