Planned Parenthood

Overview

Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) is the United States nonprofit reproductive health-care organization that traces its beginnings to 1916, when nurse and activist Margaret Sanger opened the first birth-control clinic in the United States, in Brooklyn, New York, at a time when Comstock Laws made contraceptives and contraceptive information illegal (EBSCO). It provides birth control, pregnancy care, abortions, and cancer screenings in the United States and around the world, and its 2024–2025 annual report counts 2.09 million patients and 9.9 million services (EBSCO; Planned Parenthood). It is also, uniquely among American health organizations, the named party in two generations of Supreme Court fights over its own funding — most recently Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, decided June 26, 2025, in which the Court held that Medicaid patients cannot privately sue states that exclude the organization from Medicaid (Faegre Drinker).

PPFA is a federation, not a single chain: it is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization that supports independently incorporated Planned Parenthood affiliates, which operate nonprofit health centers across the country, while PPFA itself educates the public and advocates on sexual and reproductive health (Planned Parenthood). That structure matters to every funding fight it enters, because the affiliates — not the national office — are the Medicaid providers whose eligibility states contest.

From a Brooklyn clinic to a national federation

Sanger, a nurse who knew the risks of unwanted pregnancies and illegal abortions, opened her first clinic in 1916 and faced arrest and jail time for it; after previous attempts that ended in jail, she finally opened the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau in 1923 to distribute contraceptives to women (EBSCO). The law moved slowly in her direction: in 1936 the US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that physicians could prescribe contraceptives to married women in New York, Connecticut, and Vermont, loosening the Comstock Laws, and more states followed suit (EBSCO). Sanger’s two organizations merged to form Planned Parenthood Federation of America Inc. in 1942 (EBSCO). The organization then rode the two great legal shifts of the next generation: the FDA approved the first birth control pill for sale in 1960, and in 1970 President Richard Nixon signed the Title X Family Planning Program, making contraceptives available to women regardless of income level, with funds for contraception education and research (EBSCO). In that same year, Planned Parenthood of Syracuse became the first Planned Parenthood clinic to offer abortion services, when abortions through the twenty-fourth week of pregnancy were legal in New York; in 1971 the organization began international programs through the International Planned Parenthood Federation (EBSCO). On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, making abortion legal nationwide, and other Planned Parenthood locations began offering abortion services (EBSCO).

The decades after Roe were a cycle of expansion and attack. In the 1980s anti-abortion activists attacked clinics across the country, including assassinations of abortion doctors and destruction of clinics, while the Reagan administration pushed parental-consent laws, limits on sex education, and efforts to overturn Roe (EBSCO). The Clinton years eased the pressure and brought a contraceptive-coverage law requiring insurers to cover contraceptives, but Congress also introduced state funding for abstinence-only programs (EBSCO). The organization celebrated its one hundredth anniversary in 2016 and made its first endorsement of a presidential candidate, Democrat Hillary Clinton; after her loss, the Trump administration gave Planned Parenthood the ultimatum to stop offering abortions or risk losing federal funding, and in 2019 a rule barring Title X participants from referring patients for abortion led the organization to exit the Title X program rather than comply (EBSCO). In late June 2022 the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturned Roe, several states moved to implement abortion bans, and Planned Parenthood expanded services meant to counter the restrictions, such as birth control access and mental health counseling (EBSCO).

Service (2024–2025 annual report)	Volume
Patients	2.09 million
Total services	9.9 million
STI tests and treatments	5.5 million
Birth control services	2.27 million
Pap tests and breast exams	331,400
Abortions	434,450
Telehealth appointments	320,390

What it does today: scale, services, and the telehealth shift

By volume, the overwhelming majority of what Planned Parenthood provides is not abortion but STI screening and contraception: its 2024–2025 annual report lists 5.5 million STI tests and treatments and 2.27 million birth control services, against 434,450 abortions, 331,400 Pap tests and breast exams, and 320,390 telehealth appointments (Planned Parenthood). The report’s own notes carry a wrinkle that matters for anyone quoting these numbers: its service data describes services provided in 2023–2024, a year behind the report’s cover date, so the figures here are attributed to the report itself rather than to fiscal 2025 (Charlotte Lozier Institute). The delivery model is shifting under the organization’s feet: patients booked more than 62,000 appointments through its Virtual Health Centers in 2025, a 31 percent increase from the previous year, and affiliates provide medication abortion through telemedicine in 24 states, reducing the need for patients to travel long distances (Planned Parenthood). Since the Dobbs decision, affiliate patient navigators and support staff have helped more than 171,000 people get abortion care, and in fiscal 2024–25 affiliates disbursed $3.7 million to more than 12,200 patients for transportation, lodging, meals, and dependent care while traveling to appointments (Planned Parenthood). The stat that anchors the funding debate is the government’s share: government grants, contracts, and Medicaid reimbursements hit $832 million in the report — 39 percent of overall revenue — but that figure covers affiliate fiscal years ending in 2024, before the July 2025 federal law blocking Medicaid patients from using Planned Parenthood, so it is a pre-defunding baseline, not a post-defunding result (Charlotte Lozier Institute).

Medina: the case that took away the private lawsuit

The Medicaid fight that defines Planned Parenthood’s current legal position began in South Carolina. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic operates two clinics in the state’s two most populous cities, offering a wide range of services to Medicaid and non-Medicaid patients, and it performs abortions (Medina opinion). In July 2018, citing a state law prohibiting the use of public funds for abortion, South Carolina announced that Planned Parenthood could no longer participate in the state’s Medicaid program (Medina opinion). Planned Parenthood and one of its patients, Julie Edwards, sued the director of the state’s Department of Health and Human Services under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, arguing that the exclusion violated Medicaid’s any-qualified-provider provision, which requires states to ensure that any eligible individual may obtain assistance from any qualified provider who undertakes to provide it (Medina opinion). The district court granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs and entered a permanent injunction against the exclusion; the Fourth Circuit affirmed, the Supreme Court vacated and remanded in light of its 2023 Talevski decision, and the Fourth Circuit reaffirmed — setting up the final appeal (Medina opinion). On the state’s side stood Alliance Defending Freedom: ADF Senior Counsel John Bursch argued for South Carolina at the Fourth Circuit and the Supreme Court, and ADF describes Medina as its case (Alliance Defending Freedom).

On June 26, 2025, the US Supreme Court decided Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, No. 23-1275, holding 6-3 that individual Medicaid beneficiaries may not sue state officials for failing to comply with the any-qualified-provider provision, because it does not clearly and unambiguously confer an individual right enforceable through Section 1983 (Faegre Drinker). Justice Gorsuch delivered the opinion, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Barrett; Justice Thomas concurred, and Justice Jackson dissented, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Kagan (Faegre Drinker). The Court’s reasoning turned on the nature of spending-power statutes: Congress offers funds in exchange for conditions, and the typical remedy for violating a condition is federal action to terminate funding, not a private lawsuit (Faegre Drinker). The distinction matters and is easy to misstate: Medina did not hold that South Carolina’s exclusion was lawful on the merits — it held that patients have no private right to challenge it in federal court under § 1983. PPFA itself provided litigation support in the case, and its annual report describes the ruling in its own terms: patients covered by Medicaid cannot sue to enforce their right to see their qualified provider of choice (Planned Parenthood). The following month, a separate federal law blocked Medicaid patients from using Planned Parenthood health centers for care, and PPFA warned that up to 200 health centers were at risk of closure — a risk warning, not a closure count (Planned Parenthood).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not claim a single settled founding year for the American Birth Control League: EBSCO dates it to 1923, the widely repeated date is 1921, and the profile asserts only the 1923 Bureau opening and the 1942 merger. It does not date the annual report’s service figures to fiscal 2025 — they describe services provided in 2023–2024. It does not claim a current health-center or affiliate total, a current chief executive, or that Medina decided the merits of South Carolina’s exclusion. It does not claim that the $832 million government-funding figure reflects the post-July-2025 funding landscape; it predates the federal Medicaid block. And it does not claim that the up-to-200 health centers described as at risk have closed.