Pregnancy centers provided $452 million in services and material goods to almost 4 million women in 2024 alone.
Pregnancy centers are poised to fill the void left after Planned Parenthood was federally defunded earlier this year, providing women across the country with life-saving services like abortion-pill reversal, counseling, and ultrasounds. But even as more women turn to pregnancy centers, the organizations that run them are being hit with legal challenges from those who object to their pro-life mission.
Planned Parenthood insisted that women across the country would be left without maternal health care after the organization was defunded earlier this year as part of President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill.
But a vast, rapidly growing network is ready to answer the call: Pregnancy centers collectively cared for more than 1 million new patients and provided $452 million in services and material goods to almost 4 million women in 2024 alone, according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute’s 2025 National Pregnancy Report.
Pregnancy centers are hitting their stride at the right moment. More than 50 Planned Parenthood locations have closed since the beginning of Trump’s second term, including the organization’s flagship location in Manhattan.
In 2023, Planned Parenthood performed more than 400,000 abortions, amounting to almost half of the U.S. total. The Hyde amendment prevents taxpayer money from directly covering abortions, but federal funds were still going to Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers, effectively subsidizing the procedures. The Big Beautiful Bill changed that.
In addition to stripping Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood, the Trump administration reversed Biden-era administrative policies that funded abortion, including Department of Defense funding for abortion-related travel and the Department of Health and Human Services funding abortion for illegal immigrants.
‘A Proud Abortion Provider’
After Roe v. Wade was reversed, Planned Parenthood decided to lean into its identity as the nation’s leading abortion provider rather than focusing on the health-care procedures that more politically astute advocates often pointed to in justifying its taxpayer-funded status.
“I think when we say, ‘It’s a small part of what we do,’ what we’re doing is actually stigmatizing it,” Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood, said in 2020, speaking on abortion. “Like: It’s really not a big deal that Planned Parenthood does this.”
“We are a proud abortion provider,” McGill continued. “We believe that abortion is health care, and we believe, fundamentally, that self-determination begins with being able to control your own body and freedom begins with being able to control your own body. So I don’t like to marginalize it in that way.”
That brazen support for abortion only fueled the conservative movement’s commitment to defunding the organization while building an alternative network of pregnancy centers to focus on the vital work that Planned Parenthood did when it wasn’t providing abortions.
Now, almost 3,000 pregnancy resource centers in the United States have proven themselves as an alternative to Planned Parenthood.
“As the landscape of abortion in America following the Dobbs decision has rapidly changed, pregnancy centers continue to offer steadfast, professional care to women and families,” Karen Czarnecki, executive director of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, said.
Yet, pregnancy resource centers are facing legal challenges, often because of their willingness to promote and provide pro-life care.
Oral arguments for First Choice v. Platkin, for example, will be heard in front of the Supreme Court on December 2.
First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc. is a nonprofit based in New Jersey, offering pregnancy-related services. The state of New Jersey launched an investigation into First Choice, claiming that the nonprofit was misleading in how it portrayed its mission — expressing a pro-life message to donors, while downplaying its convictions in public.
A subpoena requesting First Choice’s internal documents, marketing materials, and donor information was filed. First Choice insists that the subpoena represents an infringement on its right to freedom of association and donor privacy.
As women come increasingly to rely on pregnancy centers and pro-life donors ramp up their support, the demand for internal documents threatens to expose organizations like First Choice to backlash.
“The fear of retribution by supporters of legal abortion is not a fiction, it is a fact,” Mary FioRito, Chicago-area attorney and long-time pro-life volunteer, said. “PRCs should not be forced to reveal the names of those who support them. Donors and volunteers whose only objective is to provide pregnant women with support should not live in fear of being doxed for doing so.”
The Uphill Battle Against Abortion Pills
Even as pregnancy centers increasingly come under threat from pro-abortion extremists, their existence as an alternative to abortion providers is saving lives.
The Charlotte Lozier Institute reported that 60 percent of women who have had an abortion would have given birth to their child if they were aware of the resources and services pregnancy resource centers provide.
But pregnancy centers are fighting an uphill battle.
Medical abortions — when women take the pills Mifepristone and Misoprostol to terminate their pregnancy — have become increasingly accessible, particularly following the Federal Drug Administration’s approval of a generic version of the protocol.
Mail order abortion pills offer a workaround for women seeking abortions in pro-life states.
Pregnancy resource centers, 29 percent of which provide abortion pill reversals — a large dose of progesterone that counteracts the progesterone blockers in Mifepristone — are an opportunity for women who either change their mind, or are administered an abortion pill without their consent, to save the pregnancy.
Both the House and the Senate have sent letters to the FDA, urging the agency to reinstate safeguards on abortion drugs, as well as reverse the Biden administration’s abortion pill mail-order policy.
“These drugs are sent across state lines with no physician oversight, and without appropriate screening to ensure that bad actors are not secretly poisoning women without their knowledge or forcing women to take abortion drugs against their will — a clear indication that radical pro-abortion activists care more about protecting abortion access than about upholding women’s health and safety,” the most recent letter, signed by 175 House members, reads.
The first year post-Dobbs, for example, there was an 11 percent increase in abortions since 2020, which researchers attribute to abortion drugs, CLI reported.
Pregnancy centers continue to provide care to women after they give birth, or even after they have an abortion at home or another facility, like Planned Parenthood. Resources include diapers, car seats, post-abortion healing care, breastfeeding consultations, and counseling.
“Rising client visits and overall satisfaction are undeniable proof these centers are improving lives. It’s imperative that pregnancy centers continue to increase the availability of services — walking alongside women, men, and families to provide love, education, and support so they can courageously choose life,” Czarnecki said.