Employees lash out at Planned Parenthood execs in wake of layoffs

Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio (PPGOH) is blaming the Big Beautiful Bill for its layoffs across the state, while PPGOH staffers claim executives were unwilling to slash their own pay to save those staffers' jobs.

Key Takeaways:

• Employees of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio say executives could have saved their jobs if executives had agreed to take a 25% pay cut. That did not happen, with executives claiming that cutting their salaries wouldn't have fixed the loss.

• The affiliate was reported to have handled finances incorrectly, despite attempts to blame federal defunding.

• PPGOH's layoffs and closures, as well as those of other affiliates, were announced either prior to federal defunding or while the defunding measure was blocked by a judge.

"In the wake of looming staff layoffs, unionized members of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio have asked the organization’s executives take a 25% pay cut to ensure that frontline staff stays on the job," Cleveland.com wrote in August.

That apparently did not happen. A report from the Cleveland Scene noted that PPGOH's president, Erica Wilson-Domer, claimed, “The impacts of a total $10 million funding loss unfortunately cannot be solved entirely through cutting executive compensation."

As a result, "[n]early 10% of PPGOH’s staff was laid off," PPGOH announced on September 2. "In total, 21 staff members were affected... amounting to over $1.3 million saved for the organization... This comes after the organization has faced mounting attacks from the Trump administration, including the loss of Title X funding and Medicaid defunding through the federal reconciliation bill," PPGOH claimed.

The Backstory:

The 2025 Reconciliation Act removed Medicaid dollars from entities that provide abortion (as of October 1, 2025) and which have received more than $800,000 in Medicaid expenditures during a previous fiscal year. The “Big, Beautiful Bill” was signed into law by President Trump on July 4, 2025 and commenced on July 7, 2025.

As previously noted by Live Action News:

... Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, and Planned Parenthood Association of Utah [] filed a lawsuit against HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and immediately thereafter, the Obama-appointed judge issued a temporary restraining order (TRO). The Trump administration issued a response to the judge’s TRO in a memorandum filed on July 14.

• July 21, 2025: U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani released a 36-page memorandum and order putting in place a preliminary injunction against the defunding of Planned Parenthood.

• July 28, 2025: Judge Talwani issued a new, expanded preliminary injunction ordering the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to continue federal Medicaid funding for all Planned Parenthood facilities nationwide.

• September 11, 2025: The First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the "The July 21, 2025 preliminary injunction and the July 28, 2025 preliminary injunction are hereby stayed pending disposition of the respective appeals" allowing Planned Parenthood to be defunded while the case proceeds.

The Details:

A January 2025 Matter News report alleged a number of problems existed at PPGOH, causing mergers to occur and staffers to unionize.

“About a year ago, management decided to do some layoffs and close down three health centers. It came out of the blue,” Olivia Oney, the Central Ohio Field Manager for PPGOH, told Matter News. “They kept saying it’s due to finances. Part of that is due to abortion bans, so I can’t blame them entirely, but it’s also due to them not handling finances correctly….”

In August, even before the Defund bill was implemented, the affiliate announced "staffing reductions were on the horizon," reported Ohio Capital Journal.

The Cleveland Scene indicated that PPGOH planned to impose pay cuts upon the remaining staffers:

Workers backed by the local arm of the Office and Professional Employees International Union want nine C-suite executives at Ohio’s Planned Parenthood branch to cut their own pay by a quarter, the union said in a press release on Thursday, to save other jobs.

The request comes after the union met for a third time... with PPGOH to try and handle fallout from about $10 million in federal funding cuts affecting 12 Ohio locations.

About $2 million in “director-level and above” spending was being cut “in an effort to reduce overall costs” concerning patient care, PPGOH allegedly told the media outlet.

Cleveland Scene claimed that Brian Pearson, "whose organization oversees the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 98, which is bargaining on PPGOH employees’ behalf, frames the current impasse... as part of a growing trend."

“It’s this common theme of workers, even those that are unionized, not having a seat at the table,” Pearson said. “And I’m definitely fed up about it.”

Unionized staffers blasted Planned Parenthood in a public letter: "As of 8/18/2025, PPGOH management verified that there are no plans for any of the Senior Leadership Team to take pay cuts to try to save PPGOH jobs..."

September 2, 2025 PPGOH announced they had "finalized the reduction in force," and according to Cleveland Scene, "No Planned Parenthood leaders... have agreed to take any pay cuts."

The Context:

Even before Planned Parenthood lost a single penny of the nearly $800 million they received from taxpayers, they threatened to close of hundreds of facilities, seeking bailouts from states with pro-abortion leadership in a ruse to fill their coffers.

In truth, Planned Parenthood — which lost donors due to its own "mission creep" and utilizes deceptive marketing practices to lure clients — was playing the victim for political gain, as it had already been planning closures and consolidations with a deliberate move toward telehealth in all of its affiliates.

As Planned Parenthood shuttered brick-and-mortar facilities and laid off staff, it intentionally drove clients to online telehealth — including the mailing of abortion pills. Its “Virtual Health Centers (VHCs)” are popping up across the country as part of a larger restructuring plan put in place years ago.

One Planned Parenthood Keystone staffer told NewLaborForum.cuny.edu:

In 2022, shortly after Planned Parenthood got the [$7.5 MILLION] donation from [Mackenzie] Scott, they increased the wages of the lowest-paid employees to “market value.”

A few months later, we had layoffs. We had another round of layoffs in 2024. It was mostly our lowest-paid employees. They also got rid of a lot of the nurse practitioners. I think that was really what got us moving. Non-licensed employees like me were doing a lot of their work.

In 2023, Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) made the “strategic decision” to restructure by laying off staff at the national level and using those dollars to “build a powerful movement for abortion access at the local and state level.”

By 2025, multiple layoffs were announced prior to the passage of the Defund bill, and even while the bill was blocked by the courts.

• FEBRUARY: The Flatwater Free Press wrote, “Planned Parenthood clinics across the country are struggling financially and dealing with high turnover as most of the organization’s fundraised money goes to legal and political causes, a recent New York Times [NYT] investigation found,” with NYT noting that “Greater New York… laid off and furloughed hundreds of employees....” (emphasis added)

• APRIL: Planned Parenthood of Michigan announced, "Planned Parenthood of Michigan (PPMI) is reducing its brick-and-mortar footprint and reorganizing operations statewide to ensure long-term sustainability... As part of this reorganization, PPMI will also reduce staffing by 10 percent, impacting clinical, programmatic, and administrative teams." Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho (PPGWNI) staffers claimed that that the affiliate had “[a] track record of poor labor conditions, a deep dive into executive compensation, ghosted donors, an upcoming merger and a 20-year-old discrimination case.” They pointed out that “Staff downsizing often follows a merger.” Staffers reportedly received a letter claiming that if “more staffing changes are needed, they will happen later this spring or early summer.”

• MAY: Planned Parenthood North Central States (PPNCS) announced it would "close and consolidate eight health centers with 66 staff members impacted by layoffs and an additional 37 staff receiving offers of reassignment."

“What benefits the national organization doesn’t always translate into improvements for affiliates,” the Wall Street Journal reported in July. “According to a former senior executive at the national office, outrage tends to fuel donations; the more restrictions on abortion, the more it benefits the national office…. Some former staff members describe the national office as bloated, with too many employees making too much money in undefined roles” (emphasis added).

The Bottom Line:

Sarah Jaffe, author of the book, "Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exhausted, Exploited, and Alone," claimed that sources within Planned Parenthood repeatedly noted increased donations post-2016.

“Everybody was donating to the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, which, not coincidentally, both had union struggles going on,” Jaffe said. “There’s a real sense that there’s money coming into this organization, [but] it’s not being spent on the right thing,” she stated.