After Planned Parenthood closures, a renewal of taxpayer funding

Every Wednesday, the staff at Her Health Women’s Center in Sioux City, Iowa, pray for the local Planned Parenthood, less than 3 miles away, which opened in 1934.

“The reason we do Wednesdays is because that used to be when the abortion days were,” said Executive Director Kristi Nathaniel. “We pray for the truth to be revealed to them.”

In 2017, Sioux City’s Planned Parenthood facility closed temporarily after state legislators voted no longer to accept federal Medicaid dollars for family planning—and just before legislators passed a law protecting babies after about six weeks of pregnancy. The facility reopened in 2020 and offered birth control, testing for sexually transmitted infections, and abortion referrals.

Last year, it closed again, one of four facilities the abortion giant shuttered in 2025. Planned Parenthood North Central States, which oversees locations in five states, blamed changing patient needs, frozen Title X funds, and potential federal funding cuts.

Planned Parenthood closed roughly 9% of its locations nationwide after a provision in last summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act blocked Medicaid funding from going to abortion providers. But that provision expired last week, allowing the abortion giant to resume collecting federal taxpayer dollars. Pro-lifers are calling on legislators to block the funding again, and they warn that some Planned Parenthood locations will now receive more funding in states that allocated money during the federal freeze. Meanwhile, they say that local pregnancy centers and health clinics are sufficient to provide the health services that women need.

At least 54 out of nearly 600 Planned Parenthood locations across the country have closed or merged with other facilities since January 2025, including one more in Iowa that is slated to close at the end of July. Two facilities closed that January, 23 closed after the Trump administration froze Title X grants in March 2025, and the rest shut after the group could no longer bill Medicaid for things like disease testing and cancer screenings.

After the budget provision took effect, Planned Parenthood and abortion provider Maine Family Planning sued the administration, arguing the law would prevent thousands of Americans from receiving necessary healthcare. According to Planned Parenthood, abortions only account for about 4.4% of its services, while STI testing and contraception make up nearly 80% of services. Still, in its most recent annual report, the group recorded 434,450 abortions, its highest number of babies killed in a single year.

“There’s no way to separate Planned Parenthood from abortion,” said Kelsey Pritchard, communications director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “If they have money coming in, they can use it for all sorts of things and then they have more money and more resources to put toward doing more abortions.”

Around the time Congress passed the One Beautiful Bill Act, 14 states committed millions of dollars in state funding to prop up the abortion business. Now, with Medicaid dollars flowing again, Pritchard said the abortion provider could be in a better financial position than before the ban.

States like Texas already prohibit abortion providers from receiving state-level Medicaid reimbursements for any services. Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld those regulations, and in December a federal appeals court ruled that the federal Medicaid cuts could continue. Planned Parenthood soon dropped its legal challenge.

Still, the abortion provider claimed that its closures left many Americans without access to reproductive healthcare. One study published last summer by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute estimated that other federally qualified health centers would need to increase their contraceptive care by more than 50% to cover the patients previously served by Planned Parenthood.

But the Charlotte Lozier Institute estimated that for every Planned Parenthood facility, there are about 15 community health clinics that are fully equipped to serve low-income and rural patients. Pritchard from SBA Pro-Life America said the community health centers offer higher-quality and more comprehensive care.

“There certainly has to be lives that have been saved from the [Planned Parenthood] closures,” Pritchard said. “The fact that there is this lack of a whole narrative of horrible things that have happened tells me that horrible things haven’t happened,” she said.

Some pregnancy resource centers also offer STI testing and initial prenatal care or refer women to local groups that do. When the Sioux City Planned Parenthood closed last year, some locals worried that they’d lose an option for sexually transmitted infections testing and immunizations.

“I’m sure some people do miss Planned Parenthood, but I don’t think we’ve seen that them closing did devastating results,” said Kristi Nathaniel of Her Health Women’s Center. “Other organizations have really stepped up.” Her Health, the Siouxland District Health Department, and the Siouxland Community Health Center have increased their STI testing and other critical services.

When the Planned Parenthood in Bemidji, Minn., closed last summer, Northwoods Pregnancy Center saw STI testing inquiries jump from an average of two per month to 15, Executive Director Stephanie Westerman told me. The pregnancy center also heard from more women considering or planning on abortion.

Women who come to Northwoods Pregnancy Center for help often drive 30 minutes to an hour for prenatal care or STI testing, Westerman said. “We’re surrounded on three sides by reservations,” she said. While the national Medicaid enrollment rate is about 1 in 5, roughly one-third of Native Americans are in the program.

Even with a population that relies heavily on financial assistance for medical care, Westerman said Planned Parenthood’s absence has not dealt a significant blow to the community. The facility, which did not perform abortions, was only open one morning and one evening a week, she said, and residents have found alternatives for care.

In Chicago, Aid for Women’s downtown location has seen 32% more women from ZIP codes in nearby Englewood since the Planned Parenthood there closed early last year. Aid for Women is not a health clinic, but representative Katie Bredemann said it regularly refers women to local organizations and helps them apply for temporary insurance coverage through the state’s Moms and Babies program or find medical care providers that provide financial assistance or sliding scale fees.

Most Planned Parenthood facilities managed to remain open after the abortion provider lost federal Medicaid funding, even in states with strong pro-life laws that do not allow the organization to bill state insurance plans. Valerie Berry is the program manager at A Moment of Hope pregnancy center in South Carolina. “The Planned Parenthood in Columbia just added a number of services including some which would be considered primary care,” Berry told me in an email. “I assume it’s a move to survive.”

This year, Republican lawmakers in Congress tried to extend the Planned Parenthood defunding measure and include it in the most recent budget reconciliation bills. But legislators failed to pass a bill with the provision before their summer recess. “The One Big Beautiful Bill Act took a historic step by temporarily ending federal Medicaid funding for abortion providers,” House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris said in a statement to WORLD. “Congress must make this policy permanent.”

Republicans may face an additional hurdle to introducing a new reconciliation bill with the defunding provision after Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham died unexpectedly on Saturday. “We’ve lost a leader for the pro-life movement who was in a position to speak into this,” South Carolina Citizens for Life President Lisa Van Riper told WORLD.

Graham had for years backed and voted for pro-life legislation aimed at keeping taxpayer dollars away from abortion providers. After his death, pro-life groups issued statements mourning his passing.

Back in Sioux City, Nathaniel said laws to prevent the abortion giant from receiving tax dollars are important, but so is changing the hearts of people who work there. “Even though the building is closed here, they’re still represented,” she said, pointing to telehealth and referrals to abortion centers in nearby Nebraska or Minnesota.

Before the local Planned Parenthood closed, the facility struggled to find staff members and even brought in workers from surrounding cities, according to Nathaniel. She said some Planned Parenthood employees left the facility because they felt conflicted between wanting to help women and recognizing that their employer performed abortions.

It remains unclear if that facility, or any of the closed locations, will reopen. “I hope Planned Parenthood doesn’t reopen just because they are getting Medicaid dollars,” Nathaniel said. “If they do, then we pray for them. We should be praying already.”