Planned Parenthood is closing its Iowa City Health Center at the end of July. After the center shutters on Friday, July 31, the Susan Knapp Health Center in Des Moines will be the only Planned Parenthood facility in the state offering in-person medical services. The Des Moines center will also continue to provide telehealth services in Iowa, according to Planned Parenthood of the North Central States (PPNCS).
PPNCS, which covers Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and North Dakota and offers telehealth services in South Dakota, also announced on Monday it is laying off 38 employees and eliminating 11 currently unfilled positions. The news release on the changes did not disclose where the layoffs are occurring.
“These decisions come as PPNCS faces unrelenting political attacks, growing restrictions on care, and an unsustainable rise in uncompensated and undercompensated care — now expected to reach $7 million in fiscal year ’26,” the news release said. “… PPNCS has spent years working to absorb the growing demand for care amid declining and unstable funding streams. Federal and hostile state actions have intensified pressure on the organization, including a Trump administration attack last week that defunded the organization from the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program for a second time, growing threats to Title X funding, and threats to extend the prohibition of Medicaid patients using their insurance to cover care at Planned Parenthood — a provision that was passed as part of HR1 that is expected to expire on July 4.”
The elimination of federal protection for abortion rights by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022, followed by the Iowa Supreme Court’s 2024 overturning of precedent to uphold Gov. Reynolds’ near-total ban on abortion in the state, placed significant constraints on Planned Parenthood in Iowa. But even before those court decisions, anti-abortion Republicans at both the federal and state levels led successful efforts to defund Planned Parenthood. The effort has included canceling funding for non-abortion-related services Planned Parenthood provides.
In 2017, federal and state funding cuts led to the first major cutback of Planned Parenthood services in Iowa. Clinics in Bettendorf, Burlington, Keokuk and Sioux City, which collectively served 14,000 patients, closed. Six years later, facilities in Des Moines, Cedar Falls and Council Bluffs were shut down. Last year, Planned Parenthood closed clinics in Ames, Cedar Rapids, Sioux City and Urbandale, leaving Iowa City and the Susan Knapp Health Center in Des Moines as the only two facilities offering in-person care.
The impact of the Iowa City closure is magnified by a new law going into effect on Wednesday that imposes new restrictions on how prescription drugs used in medication abortions are prescribed and dispensed. Those medications, like other medications, can currently be prescribed in a telehealth appointment. But starting July 1, a doctor must conduct an in-person examination of a patient before prescribing an “abortion-inducing drug,” eliminating telehealth appointments, and they must be given to the patient in-person, eliminating delivery by mail.
The Iowa City Health Center provides abortion services, including medication abortions, as does Iowa City’s Emma Goldman Clinic, an independent, feminist women’s health clinic founded in 1973. As part of the services it will provide as the last Planned Parenthood clinic in Iowa, the Susan Knapp Health Center in Des Moines will continue to offer abortion services, but will no longer be able to offer medication abortion via telehealth due to the new law.
“We are in the hardest moment for the reproductive freedom movement in modern day history,” PPNCS President and CEO Ruth Richardson said in a statement on the Iowa City closure and staff layoffs on Monday. “By protecting our core infrastructure now, we will be ready to expand care again when the pendulum shifts — because it will. After seeing the resilience of our patients, communities, supporters, champions, and our staff and providers, I believe we have what it takes to sustain our strength and build back.”
In addition to abortion care, Planned Parenthood’s Iowa City Health Center provides pregnancy testing, prenatal and postpartum care, birth control and emergency contraception, STI testing and treatment, HIV services, mental health services, gender-affirming care, as well as wellness and preventive care.
