organizations|Labour pains

Planned Parenthood

America's largest abortion provider. One in three women and one in ten men have sought care at a Planned Parenthood clinic. In 2024 the organisation provided more than 9m services, including 5m STI tests; for comparison, the Title X safety-net programme offered 4.6m STI tests in 2023. Its management is decentralised: local affiliates run networks of clinics.

Funding

Federal law blocks Planned Parenthood from using government funds for abortion care. Its largest source of financing is Medicaid, which pays for non-abortion treatments. The federal government pays 90% of the cost of family-planning services.

Defunding efforts

Mike Pence, then an Indiana congressman, first introduced an amendment in Congress to defund Planned Parenthood in 2007. At least 14 states have tried to block Planned Parenthood from their state Medicaid programmes in the past decade. When Texas blocked Planned Parenthood from a state family-planning programme in 2013, fewer people got contraception and there was an increase in births covered by Medicaid.

Under Donald Trump's second term, Planned Parenthood faces three simultaneous funding challenges. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act establishes a one-year ban on federal Medicaid payments to abortion providers that received more than $800,000 in 2023; clinics could be blocked even if they merely belong to a network that provides abortions. The Supreme Court's June 2025 ruling in Medina v Planned Parenthood South Atlantic decided that states can block certain providers from their Medicaid programmes—state bans are likely to outlast the BBB's one-year provision. The Trump administration has also paused Title X payments, withholding funds from just under a fifth of all Title X grantees, including 144 Planned Parenthood clinics. Planned Parenthood has sued to block enforcement of the BBB provision.

Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood's head, says a third of clinics are at risk of closure if permanently cut off from federal funds. The organisation estimates 200 of its clinics are at risk because of the BBB, and has already announced the closure of more than 30 clinics in 2025. The Congressional Budget Office expects the defunding to cost the federal government $52m owing to an uptick in births.