Fact Sheet: Community Health Centers Outnumber Planned Parenthood Facilities 15 to 1

To view CLI’s national and state maps of community health centers in comparison to Planned Parenthood locations in 2025, please visit: https://lozierinstitute.org/realchoices/

Editor’s Note: This fact sheet was updated on May 12 to reflect Planned Parenthood’s most recent annual report.

Planned Parenthood vs. Community Health Centers that Provide Women’s Health

• There are an estimated 15 community-based health clinics offering women’s health care for every Planned Parenthood facility in the United States.
• That’s over 8,800 community women’s health providers compared to just 579 brick-and-mortar and virtual Planned Parenthood locations.
  • An estimated 5,500 Federally Qualified Health Center sites that specifically offer women’s health services.
  • An estimated 3,300 Rural Health Clinic sites that offer women’s health.

Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) help those in need

• FQHCs are community-based health care providers vetted and funded by the federal government to provide comprehensive healthcare services to low-income, vulnerable, and underserved populations.
• FQHCs provide services on a sliding scale to make healthcare affordable and widely available to those in need.
• In 2023, FQHC sites of all kinds were estimated to serve 1 in 10 Americans.
• FQHCs performed more than 4 million HIV tests and provided nearly 1.7 million patients with contraception in 2023.
• Charlotte Lozier Institute’s analysis of FQHCs includes only those sites that offer women’s health services, including OB/GYN care, well-woman care, and family planning.

Rural Health Clinics (RHCs) make health care available where it’s needed

• RHCs qualify to receive special funding from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to make healthcare available to Medicare and Medicaid recipients in underserved areas.
• RHCs are located in rural areas that are particularly vulnerable to healthcare shortages.
• RHCs were estimated to serve more than 60% of rural Americans in 2022.
• Charlotte Lozier Institute’s analysis of RHCs includes only those locations that offer women’s health services.

Planned Parenthood performs abortions

• Abortions were 96.9% of services Planned Parenthood offered to women looking for help related to their pregnancies in 2022-23, according to its 2023-2024 report. Prenatal care, miscarriage care, and adoption referrals together accounted for just 3% of Planned Parenthood’s pregnancy care services.
• Planned Parenthood is performing more abortions than ever, reporting a record high in the most recent annual report, according to a Charlotte Lozier Institute analysis. In the 2023-2024 annual report, the number of abortions increased by over 9,500 to reach 402,230 in 2022-23. Planned Parenthood recently closed several facilities, with patients and staff reporting shoddy care and substandard conditions. However, in the 2023-2024 report, Planned Parenthood reported $792.2 million in the form of government grants, contracts, and Medicaid reimbursements (39% of its total revenue) received in 2022-23.
• A recent KFF analysis found that Planned Parenthood served just 11% of Medicaid family planning patients in 2021, and this was concentrated in states like California, Connecticut, and Washington. In more than half the states, Planned Parenthood served less than 5% of Medicaid beneficiaries who obtained family planning services.

Methodology

Federally Qualified Health Center data were obtained from the publicly available Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) federal agency file of Health Center Service Delivery and Look-Alike Sites, downloaded in January 2025 from https://data.hrsa.gov/data/download?hmpgtitle=hmpg-hrsa-data. Rural Health Clinic data were obtained from the publicly available Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) federal agency report of Active Provider and Supplier Counts, downloaded in March 2025 from https://www.cms.gov/Center/Provider-Type/Rural-Health-Clinics-Center.

To produce an estimate of the number of Federally Qualified Health Center and Rural Health Clinic service sites that provide women’s health services, we reviewed all locations and identified those that provide health services to the general public. Non-healthcare sites (such as administrative locations) and sites that are not typically intended for the general public (such as school-based sites or sites located within shelters or other residential buildings) were removed. Sites that no longer appeared to be open were also removed. When multiple sites were at the same address, or close to the same address, only one site was counted.

We then reviewed the main website for each location to determine whether it provided women’s health. Sites offering OB/GYN, gynecology, prenatal and/or postpartum care, well woman care, women’s health, family planning, mammography, or other related services were included. If a website listed the services available at each individual site, only sites explicitly offering women’s health were included; if a website advertised women’s health but did not list the services available at each individual site, all locations were included unless it appeared that they were not a women’s health provider (e.g., dentists or pediatricians). Grantees not offering women’s health were excluded. Not all Rural Health Clinics operate websites; for locations where services were not advertised online or were not described in detail, a sample was called to determine whether these locations offered women’s health. If one RHC location reported that women’s healthcare was available (or unavailable), that information was applied to other locations operated by the same organization.

This analysis is an estimate of the number of FQHC and RHC locations providing women’s health services based on a review of HRSA and CMS data and FQHC grantee and RHC websites; it does not guarantee the services available at any specific community health center. Websites may not always accurately reflect the services available. This analysis may overestimate the number of women’s health locations by counting some sites that do not provide women’s health. Alternatively, it may underestimate the number of women’s health locations by excluding sites that do not advertise women’s health on their websites. Further refinement of this analysis and the updating of publicly available spreadsheets by relevant federal agencies or Health Center grant awardees, for example, is welcomed.

Planned Parenthood locations were obtained from plannedparenthood.org in February and March 2025. When multiple Planned Parenthood centers were at the same address, only one site was counted.