Planned Parenthood closures, restructuring, and telehealth began long before defunding

While Planned Parenthood shutters facilities and blames it on the defunding in the “Big Beautiful Bill” — which is not in effect and has been blocked by a judge — is it actually experiencing a crisis, or is it manufacturing one to gain money and power?

In part one of this series, Live Action News detailed how prior financial shortfalls and deficits played a role in the closure of Planned Parenthood facilities before any plans for federal Medicaid defunding. In addition, its services, clients, and donors have been declining for decades.

And as previously touched upon, Planned Parenthood had already chosen to move toward a more virtual business model in order to remain solvent, yet it has disingenuously chosen to blame federal Medicaid defunding for its facility closures and staff layoffs.

Restructuring, closures, and even the expansion of its telehealth program to ALL of its affiliates began long before any discussion of federal defunding.

Key Takeaways:

• Nearly a year ago, Planned Parenthood signaled plans to shutter facilities across the country due to deficits, structural shifts, staffing shortages, and more.

• Planned Parenthood has seen a decrease in patients since a record high in 2006.

• The mail-order abortion pill regimen also caused abortion businesses, including Planned Parenthood, to begin shifting their business models to incorporate telehealth and virtual services (including the abortion pill and even birth control) to a greater degree.

• Planned Parenthood has stated that 70% of its abortion business comes from the sale of the abortion pill regimen.

The Details:

On June 2, The Guardian wrote:

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.

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.

Shift to ‘telehealth’ contributes to Planned Parenthood facility closures

Clients drop over time

The number of clients seen by Planned Parenthood has been steadily declining:

3.14M (2006) → 2.4M (2019) → 2.16M (2020) → 2.13M (2021-22) → 2.05M (2022-23)

In 2023-24, Planned Parenthood showed a slight increase to 2.08M clients.

Overall, Planned Parenthood has experienced a nearly 33% decrease in clients from a record high of 3.1M in 2006.

Mail-order abortion pill changes business model

Along with this drop in clients, Planned Parenthood has adapted to adopt a business model that incorporates (and increasingly relies upon) telehealth — including the mailing of abortion pills and other drugs like contraception.

This has enabled the corporation to shutter brick-and-mortar facilities and drive clients to online services. The abortion corporation now claims 70% of its abortion business is due to the abortion pill, which is no longer required to be dispensed at in-person appointments. The Biden FDA permanently dropped this requirement in 2021.

Planned Parenthood rolled out its national telehealth program the year before in 2020, announcing that Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands would become a national telemedicine hub. A few short years later, Planned Parenthood’s 2022-23 annual report acknowledged that ALL 49 affiliates at that time had begun offering “telehealth” services — and in 2023-24 it announced that “Virtual Health Centers (VHC) have been introduced at 23 Planned Parenthood affiliates.”

These planned expansions were noted in the corporation’s 2019 plan, which stated (emphasis added):

Planned Parenthood will expand services in states where abortion is likely to remain legal and accessible, and invest in technology and other resources to help people living in hostile states access abortion, no matter what. We’ll do this through investing in a Regional Access Network, expanding where we offer telemedicine, and leveraging technology and innovation to help connect people to services.

Caitlin Myers, a professor of economics at Middlebury College who studies abortion access, suggested to NPR’s Michigan affiliate in April of this year that the ease of access to chemical abortions online has been forcing abortion providers to “change their business model.”

Myers claimed those market changes, in addition to federal funding cuts and regulatory uncertainties, have created “new pressures on the older school, brick-and-mortar facilities” which still maintain services for people “for whom telehealth abortion isn’t a good option…. And so it’s necessitated a lot of change for these facilities.”

Restructuring Plans Were Already in Motion

Planned Parenthood claims it is closing facilities and laying off staff due to the defunding effort, but plans were already in the works to close and consolidate facilities and utilize online telehealth services to a greater degree. Below is a timeline of just some of these events:

May 2023: Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) announced a “strategic decision” to restructure the organization by laying off staff at the national level and instead use those dollars to “build a powerful movement for abortion access at the local and state level.”

These efforts were evident well before the defunding provision was signed into law.

January 2025: Planned Parenthood of Illinois (PPIL) admitted it had “made the difficult decision to close four health centers” due to “facing a financial shortfall brought on by rising health care costs for in-person care, increase in patient volume needing financial assistance, uncertain patient care landscape under a new national political administration, and the need to create a sustainable future after the overturning of Roe v Wade.”

PPIL announced a plan to “expand[] virtual options via telehealth appointments and the PPDirect app to minimize patient disruption.”

March 2025: Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaiʻi, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky (PPGNHAIK) announced the “launch of its Virtual Health Center in Indiana.”

April 2025: Planned Parenthood of Michigan (PPMI) announced plans to “restructure,” consolidate, and “permanently close” multiple facilities, adding that “over the next few months” PPMI would “work to expand its Virtual Health Center to offer telehealth 7 days per week.”

Despite an attempt to blame this on a cut to Title X funds, The Guardian claimed that “Planned Parenthood of Michigan was not among the Planned Parenthood affiliates that saw their Title X funding frozen.”

Michigan Public reported that “PPMI also pledged to expand telehealth capacity by 40% by summer” while “cutting 10% of staff, including 22 positions across both administrative and clinical roles” due to “ongoing financial challenges” as well as Title X cuts. “With the expansion of telehealth, I think we’ll actually be able to see more patients,” PPMI president and CEO Paula Thornton Greear stated.

Michigan Public admitted that “even before the current Trump administration, PPMI had experienced some financial headwinds” with “a loss of some $2.4 million in the 2022-2023 fiscal year….” It noted (emphases added):

And in February, the New York Times published an investigation alleging patient care problems and staffing issues at numerous state Planned Parenthood affiliates.

Those issues, some staff members told the Times, stem from financial and political pressures, as well as a funding structure in which the national Planned Parenthood federation focuses the majority of its spending on the legal fight over abortion access, more than providing direct support for the medical care provided by state affiliates.

April 2025: Planned Parenthood Association of Utah (PPAU) claimed a cut to Title X funds was forcing it to make “decisions to preserve the organization’s long-term sustainability and access to care.” The affiliate was granted over $2.2M from Title X in 2024. PPAU committed 2,676 abortions in 2024, 2,123 abortions in 2023, and more than 2,800 in 2022. Medicaid was listed as less than 1% of total revenue in 2024, and the affiliate raised $3.1M.

In 2023, The affiliate’s reports showed a $1.3M surplus in 2021, a $7M surplus in 2022, and a $1M surplus in 2023.

The Bottom Line:

In the next article in this series, we will show how Planned Parenthood was signaling future plans to close facilities across the country prior to 2025, long before the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill.

Before the Big, Beautiful Bill came along, Planned Parenthood had already begun shutting down facilities, citing financial constraints, consolidated job functions, cost-saving measures, deficits, long-term structural shifts, changes in U.S. healthcare, staffing shortages, and funding limitations.

In other words, Planned Parenthood’s handwringing over facility closures and restructuring is manufactured, and is great example of “never letting a good crisis go to waste.” Planned Parenthood and the abortion-friendly media are hard at work crafting a false narrative in an attempt to leverage political events to the benefit of the pro-abortion cause.

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