Latest news with #ShireenGhorbani
The Guardian
02-06-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
At least 20 Planned Parenthood clinics shutter amid political turbulence
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. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion 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.
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Planned Parenthood of Utah to close 2 clinics following federal freeze on Title X funding
SALT LAKE CITY () — Planned Parenthood Association of Utah (PPAU) announced that it will close two of its locations after the loss of federal funds. On Tuesday, the organization announced that the Logan and St. George locations are set to close May 2 and that clinical and education staff will be reduced. Earlier this month, the federal government froze Title X funding, which is used for organizations that work to provide family planning, birth control, cancer screenings, and STI testing. For PPAU, that is $2.8 million that is now being withheld. More than 200 volunteers dig tree wells for Salt Lake City 'Earth Week' initiative 'When you start to think about the impacts of witholding these dollars, it means people will have to defer care, or they will have to spend a lot more, or disrupt their lives a lot more to get the kind of care that they need,' said Shireen Ghorbani, Interim President of the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah. To put into perspective the impact these closures can have, Ghorbani shared that, for someone in St. George, the closest options they would have would be to go to Orem (roughly 260 miles away) or Las Vegas (about 150 miles away). In a press release, PPAU said that, without Title X funding, it will also need to increase the sliding-fee scale for self-pay patients. Additionally, telehealth services will be expanded to help patients in rural or remote areas. Title X was in 1970 with bipartisan support and has been the nation's only federally funded family planning program. Ghorbani said that since 1985, PPAU has been the only recipient of Title X funding in the state, and that the withholding of such funds will impact tens of thousands of Utahns who rely on Planned Parenthood health centers for affordable reproductive care. PPAU reports that in 2024, 4,500 patients received care at the Logan and St. George health centers, and more than 26,000 low-income Utahns received low or no-cost services as a result of funding from the Title X program. '[That was] because of a promise from the federal government to ensure that they could make decisions about their bodies in regard to getting birth control when they needed it, getting screened for cancer if they needed that, making sure they were healthy, getting STI screening when they needed that,' she said. 'That promise has been withheld from this administration, and that means that Utahns across the state no longer receive low or no-cost healthcare… Those are individuals who do not have the money to come and see a primary care physician. They come here because they absolutely need our care.' In addition, she said the loss of Title X funding will also impact the organization's educational programs. 'It also supports our education, making sure that people get maturation classes, STI classes, so they understand their sexual health. That has also been deeply impacted by these cuts,' Ghorbani said. PPAU will still have operating health centers in Orem, West Valley City, Salt Lake City, South Jordan, and Ogden. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
