Independent clinics provide the majority of U.S. abortions—and are increasingly the backbone of care, especially for later procedures and patients navigating post-Roe bans and clinic closures.
2025 was a year marked by attacks on reproductive freedom, including a staggering wave of forced Planned Parenthood closures. About 50 of Planned Parenthood’s 600 locations had shut down by the end of 2025, largely due to the combined loss of Title X funds and Medicaid reimbursements.
Independent abortion clinics continue to play a crucial role in the abortion access landscape.
Even before last year’s Planned Parenthood cuts, independent clinics provided most U.S. abortions, offering care to women in big cities and rural healthcare deserts alike. In 2025, independent clinics provided 58 percent of U.S. abortions (compared to 38 percent through Planned Parenthood, and 3 and 1 percent through hospitals and doctors’ offices, respectively), according to the annual Communities Need Clinics report from Abortion Care Network (ACN), released in December.
“Indies are there when communities need the most, serving patients who face the highest barriers to accessing reproductive healthcare,” said Erin Grant, ACN’s co-executive director, during a recent webinar.
Independent clinics also provide nearly all later-care abortions, despite being frequently underfunded and lacking name recognition. With 41 states banning abortion either completely or after a certain number of weeks, abortion options for patients later in their pregnancies are extremely limited in the U.S. Some clinics may also not provide abortions past a certain cutoff, even if they are still legal in the state, because of the higher costs of deep sedation and other medical requirements for later abortions.
There are many reasons why a patient might need a later abortion. Often, these are planned and wanted pregnancies where the fetus turns out to have serious anomalies that aren’t detected until after the 20-week mark, including organ malformations or chromosomal conditions that eliminate the fetus’ chances of survival while making the pregnancy dangerous or even life-threatening for the woman. In other cases, patients plan to have abortions earlier but are delayed by barriers such as cost, lack of insurance or having to travel a long distance to a state where abortion is legal.
Currently, 63 percent of all U.S. clinics that offer abortions after the first trimester, and 100 percent of clinics offering care after 26 weeks, are independent. These clinics are a lifeline for patients who need later abortions, even if patients frequently have to travel from other states to receive this care.
Still, independent clinics face plenty of challenges. Along with Planned Parenthood locations, they are closing at an alarming rate as state abortion bans go into effect and clinics lose funding. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 with the Dobbs decision, more than 100 independent abortion clinics have closed throughout the country, including 23 in 2025 alone. There are currently 13 states without a single abortion-providing clinic, most of them in the South and Midwest.
A small handful of independent clinics, like the West Alabama Women’s Center in Tuscaloosa, have been able to stay open in states that have completely banned abortion. These clinics can offer follow-up care to women who have left the state for an abortion or self-managed an abortion at home, as well as prenatal and contraceptive services, while planning to start offering abortions if they ever become legal again.
In states like Florida, where abortion is technically still legal but strictly capped at six weeks, independent clinics help patients who can make it in just under the wire and refer others for out-of-state care.
Amber Gavin is the vice president of advocacy and operations at A Woman’s Choice, an independent clinic with five locations in Jacksonville, Fla., Danville, Va., and Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh, N.C. She told Ms. that A Woman’s Choice’s multiple locations means women past the six-week cutoff in Florida or past 12 weeks in North Carolina can travel to another location while staying in the same network. “They’ve already maybe received some counseling, their consents and ultrasound, and patient education, and then it’s like a warm handoff. They can go to another clinic and receive the care and know that their chart and everything is going with them.”
Gavin said that since Florida passed its six-week ban in 2024, the number of patients able to receive abortions at the Jacksonville clinic has drastically decreased. At the same time, there has been a huge increase in patients traveling to the Charlotte clinic. North Carolina’s 12-week ban helps more patients receive care there, while Charlotte is a major airport hub and more accessible for out-of-state patients than other places.
… A Woman’s Choice’s multiple locations means women past the six-week cutoff in Florida or past 12 weeks in North Carolina can travel to another location while staying in the same network.
Another challenge of providing abortion care in the South is educating patients about state laws, which, in some places, have constantly been in flux since Dobbs in 2022. “For a really long time, in Florida and North Carolina, abortion was accessible, and so people are surprised,” says Gavin. “We’ll have patients who will call and ask to receive an abortion past 12 weeks, and we’ll say we’re really sorry, we’re no longer able to provide that.”
A lot of clinic work involves correcting misinformation and helping people understand what is and isn’t available in their state. “We need folks to know that the laws have changed, but that, yes, abortion is still accessible, still legal in Florida, in North Carolina, Virginia and beyond,” Gavin says. “Yeah, there are very many states where it is not, but I do think where it is still legal, that we do need to do a better job of educating patients and other physicians.”
Even though telehealth abortion is available in all 50 states, and patients can order mifepristone and misoprostol pills online from organizations like Aid Access and carafem, there are many reasons why a patient might prefer an in-person abortion at a brick-and-mortar clinic. For some patients with medical complications, or who are past 14 weeks, a surgical abortion is a safer option than a medication abortion, even if that means traveling to a different state for care. Independent clinics also frequently offer both surgical and medication options, as opposed to doctor’s offices or Planned Parenthood clinics which don’t always offer a full range of choices.
Since abortion is one of the most stigmatized healthcare decisions a person can make, going in person to a clinic can also provide reassurance and emotional support for patients. Many independent clinics do everything they can to make patients’ appointments as low-stress an experience as possible by showing movies in the waiting room or offering childcare for patients traveling with young children.
As ACN’s Communities Need Clinics report shows, independent clinics are crucial to the future of abortion access in the U.S., especially abortions later in pregnancy. Like every other aspect of abortion care, their existence is being threatened by state laws and funding cuts.
“The financial realities of running a public, community-based abortion clinic can make it challenging to stay open in the United States, and abortion clinic closures continue to outpace new clinic openings,” Grant shared at ACN’s panel.
But despite the post-Roe bans and the funding cuts of just the last year, independent providers are still here to ensure that abortion care is available for the patients who most need them.