You Can Now Get Botox at Planned Parenthood
To be honest, the Botox of it all may be the least surprising part of this announcement. The neuromodulator brand has become a noun, a verb, and a cultural lynchpin. Something that is a mundane part of our routine, like desk salads and Pilates classes and no-foam lattes. A treatment once reserved for the confines of a doctor’s office is now very widely available; you can even address those 11s after dropping $20 on a single strawberry at Erewhon. It’s become so pervasive in our culture that, thanks to TV commercials and subway advertisements, my daughter already knows what Botox is; she’s 7.
Planned Parenthood leaning into Botox isn’t just a reflection of its ubiquitousness, it’s an indication of the health care provider’s dire financial situation. Last October, Planned Parenthood closed its flagship (and sole) Manhattan location, which had been providing services from a stately brick building on Bleecker Street for 36 years. That was just one of more than 50 Planned Parenthood clinics that closed across the country in 2025. And while the abortion discussion is often divided down party lines, those closures were not: They happened in both red and blue states. Though the overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022 resulted in widespread abortion restrictions and bans, terminating a pregnancy (with some restrictions) remains legal in many states, New York included.
For Planned Parenthood, lack of need is certainly not the issue: According to a poll released last year, one in three women, and half of Black women, have gone to a Planned Parenthood clinic for care. I don’t know what I would have done without my Commonwealth Avenue location when I was in college in Boston. And at least four in 10 individuals with Medicaid receive services at Planned Parenthood. Last summer, Republicans in Congress passed a provision as part of Trump’s cruelly named One Big Beautiful Bill Act to strip Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood centers in 22 states and Washington DC. After some legal flurries, a U.S. appeals court upheld the order in December. One third of Planned Parenthood’s revenue comes from state and federal government funding, including Medicaid; the rest is from out-of-pocket payments and private donors.
In recent years, Planned Parenthood has faced not just a funding problem, but an image problem. And not just on the right. As New York Magazine reported in January, many abortion rights activists have taken umbrage with the organization’s approach to maintaining political power by supporting some politicians who don’t rally for abortion rights. They’ve also been disappointed that Planned Parenthood hasn’t pushed back against the passage of hostile laws, and has resisted mailing medication abortion to states where there were bans. The Guttmacher Institute reported that medication abortions accounted for 63% of all US abortions in 2023, and, according to #WeCount, in the first half of 2025, 27% of medication abortions were arranged via telehealth. But while Planned Parenthood has become synonymous with abortion and the debate around it, the organization has continually shown in their annual reports that abortion makes up a tiny percentage of the overall health care services it offers. The vast majority focus on STI testing and treatment, contraceptive services, and cancer screenings.
