Planned Parenthood Cuts Expose and Exacerbate Healthcare Disparities

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Under Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” Planned Parenthood can lose federal Medicaid funding for one year, endangering 200 clinics nationwide that 1.1 million Americans currently depend on for healthcare. The provision targets not just Planned Parenthood but all nonprofit clinics that provide abortions and received more than $800,000 in Medicaid payments in 2023 — restricting Medicaid users from using their insurance to cover services at any healthcare provider that fits this criteria. For Planned Parenthood, this risks the healthcare of half of their patients, who rely on Medicaid as their insurance.

Fortunately, a federal judge in Massachusetts has indefinitely blocked the provision from being enforced on Monday, July 28 after Planned Parenthood had filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the cuts three weeks prior. The judge deemed the policy as retaliating against Planned Parenthood specifically in a way that violates their First Amendment rights, as little-to-no other nonprofit clinics in the country meet the $800,000 minimum.

New York currently has 48 Planned Parenthood locations that support 100,000 residents. In an interview with Radio Catskill, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York CEO Wendy Stark said the nonprofit will continue to maintain operation as they have been doing, with the goal of keeping as many of their doors open as possible. But Stark said hard decisions are ahead if these cuts are to be put into place — which includes laying off staff, reducing services and even closing clinics at the detriment of people’s access to sexual and reproductive health services like abortions.

A “backdoor abortion ban” is how Stark referred to cuts, which starve clinics across both red and blue states who perform abortions of their funding. Although federal Medicaid funding already cannot be used to cover abortions except in cases of rape, incest or endangerment of the mother’s life, these cuts threaten Planned Parenthood’s other services, such as cancer screenings, STI testing and pregnancy counseling, and their overall ability to be a healthcare provider for local communities.

“The strategy of trying to impact us monetarily in this way through public funds is a way of not having to try to pass a federal abortion ban because they know that the voters won’t stand for that,” Stark said. “ So trying to defund or economically injure if you will, the providers of abortion care and specifically Planned Parenthood now — but I imagine this is only the first of other actions that the government may attempt — is trying to get rid of the providers of abortion right? A different methodology of trying to keep people from essential healthcare services.”

But Andrea Flynn said what is especially concerning is that these cuts to Planned Parenthood are not isolated. Flynn is a professor at Columbia University who specializes in researching the economics of reproductive health as well as a resident of Westchester County where she is active in the grassroots group Rivertown 4 Reproductive Rights. From cuts to Medicaid that stand to leave almost 12 million Americans uninsured by 2034 , which in turn defunds community hospitals and clinics, to cuts to research on women and queer people’s healthcare, Flynn compared these cuts to an onion that keeps unfolding — disproportionately hurting working-class women and/or women of color in the process.

“So we have the Medicaid attacks on Planned Parenthood, and then there are also all sorts of other ways this is going to impact the community,” Flynn said. “We have small hospitals that are already on the brink of closure and will not be able to sustain themselves without Medicaid. These hospitals are already running on razor thin margins. They provide critical care to those in the greatest need. They are really like community safety net hospitals […] and in many communities, these are the only places where people can go for care.”

These Medicaid cuts come as Planned Parenthood has already been financially struggling due to historical issues of under reimbursement for women and queer people’s healthcare, Stark said. In 2024, Stark said it cost $67 million for Planned Parenthood of Greater New York to provide healthcare services but was only reimbursed $36 million by different insurance plans, including Medicaid.

“We have already had to make a series of hard decisions over the last years that were partly the result of the COVID pandemic and all of the challenges to healthcare infrastructure that happened in that pandemic to the incredible inflation that we’ve seen since the pandemic, especially in the healthcare realm,” Stark said. “A really longstanding problem [is] that many outpatient healthcare services, specifically primary care services and specifically sexual and reproductive health services for people who are assigned female at birth are so under reimbursed […]That is a structural problem in our healthcare system writ large and really speaks to the undervaluing of sexual and reproductive healthcare services and the bodies of people assigned female at birth and trans folks writ large.”

Leslie Seery, who founded Rivertown for Reproductive Rights after Roe v. Wade was overturned to fundraise for the New York Abortion Access Fund, said the effect of these cuts on a healthcare system that is already difficult to navigate for women is daunting to think about for her and her three daughters.

“All it takes is one complication with your health, and then you realize how much time and effort it takes to advocate for yourself,” Seery said. “I’ve recently had to had a lump in my breast and had to go get it checked out and the amount of time I spent trying to find a place that could get me in for a diagnostic mammogram in a timely manner [and] even before that, just getting into my OB/GYN or my general practitioner, it was unbelievable. I was thinking about these things — if I had a full-time job or I had a newborn baby at home. Luckily, I was able just to sit there and like, call, call, call all sorts of different places […] It made me feel really upset because I was in a scary situation and I needed answers. And it was so hard for me coming from such a place of privilege.”

As clinics close due to a lack of funding, healthcare will become that much harder for the communities who’ve already faced barriers — especially New York’s rural communities where limited healthcare providers and transportation costs have acted as major roadblocks to care. Dayna Halprin, a chef and activist native to Sullivan County, said the county has already been dealing with the loss of its only Planned Parenthood back in 2020. What started out as a temporary closure due to financial issues became permanent, forcing residents who wanted to use Planned Parenthood to have to travel up to over an hour to their other locations in Newburgh and Goshen. In many cases, Halprin said it also led people to forgo care altogether.

“So we worked our way up, and we met eventually with the CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York,” Halprin said. “It became very apparent that that was a permanent closure in Monticello, [that] they had no plans of reopening a clinic in Sullivan County and that they couldn’t maintain the clinics that they did have open at the time when we first started meeting with them in 2024 […]The Goshen location closed in August of 2024 as well as a few other upstate New York locations. So this has been a trend for Planned Parenthood of Greater New York to be closing these more rural health clinics and consolidating services elsewhere.”

Sullivan County in particular is among the lowest in state health rankings, and over 60% of its residents rely on Medicaid. The county is also home to a large population of migrant workers for whom options are narrower and healthcare access as a whole has proven to be an even bigger challenge. While the county does have other healthcare providers besides Planned Parenthood, Halprin, who is a Medicaid recipient themselves, explained that some have long wait times of up to a couple of months for appointments, while others hospitals don’t even take Medicaid or have OB/GYN services.

And once these clinics are lost, Flynn said, they will not be easy to rebuild — meaning communities, especially those already under resourced, will be deprived of essential services beyond just the four years that Trump is in office.

“And we’re really talking about kind, compassionate, culturally appropriate sensitive care,” Flynn said. “Not everyone wants to go to a hospital to have their most intimate needs met. It’s been proven time and time again that these clinics are incredibly safe, super effective, and that a whole bunch of people who use them rely on them as their only trusted source of care. And I think particularly in a moment when our rights and access to healthcare are being attacked at every turn, having a place you go where you feel safe, where you feel like you can trust the providers is just incredibly important. So I want us to think about not just losing that access to care, but it is like losing a pillar of a community that allows you to feel safe and cared for.”

Image: Planned Parenthood of Greater New York hosted a rally with the NYC Council Women’s Caucus at NYC City Hall on May 23, 2025 (Photo credit: plannedparenthood.org)