Video

Planned Parenthood is critical to birth control access in the United States

Research from Guttmacher and Power to Decide shows that 21.4 million women in need of free or low-cost birth control live in US counties where local clinics can't meet this need. Planned Parenthood helps these women and many others access affordable sexual and reproductive health care, but this critical provider is under relentless attack by anti-abortion politicians.

If Planned Parenthood clinics no longer received federal funding and were forced to stop providing affordable care, the impact would be staggering: 12.4 million women in need of publicly funded contraceptive care could be affected. That is 58% of the total number of US women who are likely to need this care.

Policymakers and advocates must defend Planned Parenthood and all providers of quality and affordable contraceptive care.

Transcript: What happens to birth control access if Planned Parenthood loses federal funding? 

21.4 million women in need of free or low-cost birth control in the US live in areas where local clinics cannot meet the need for affordable contraceptive care according to research from Guttmacher and Power to Decide. We refer to these as contraceptive access gaps. 

Planned Parenthood helps these women and many others access affordable sexual and reproductive health care, but this critical provider is under relentless attack by anti-abortion politicians. Guttmacher researchers wanted to understand what would happen if Planned Parenthood clinics could no longer receive federal dollars and were forced to stop providing affordable contraceptive care. 

We crunched the numbers and in short, things would get a whole lot worse, so let’s talk.

If Planned Parenthood health centers were removed from the publicly funded contraceptive care network, an estimated 12.4 million women would live in counties that would have reduced access to contraceptive care. 

Let’s understand what that means regionally: 

In 29 counties across the Northeast and Midwest, Planned Parenthood is the only publicly funded contraceptive provider. In these counties, about 240,000 women would lose their only source of affordable contraceptive care. 

The largest number of women affected by a potential Planned Parenthood removal from this care system live in the West and South, with over 4 million women in the West and 3.7 million women in the South living in counties with reduced access. 

To learn more about the limitations of contraceptive access and the potential effects of defunding Planned Parenthood, visit the links in our bio.