World’s largest Planned Parenthood clinic to close due to lack of funding

 

Houston, Texas, Jul 28, 2025 / 17:03 pm (CNA).

Planned Parenthood has announced the closure of two of its six clinics in the Houston area, including its Prevention Park location, which was known as the largest abortion facility in the Western Hemisphere until the state’s near-total abortion ban in 2022.

Texas Right to Life President Dr. John Seago in an interview with CNA called the Prevention Park location’s closure an “unmitigated victory for life.”

At its peak, this center aborted 10,000 babies a year, up until 24 weeks of pregnancy, according to Shawn Carney, founder and CEO of the pro-life group 40 Days for Life, whose headquarters in Bryan, Texas, are located in a former abortion clinic near Texas A&M University.

“There just hasn’t been a more exciting time to be pro-life,” Carney told CNA, saying the clinic’s closure is one of “the greatest victories” in the history of the pro-life movement.

Seago called the 78,000-square-foot structure, which he said resembles a Central American pyramid where human sacrifices took place, a “symbol of Planned Parenthood’s height of power and influence.”

Carney said volunteers would get “overwhelmed” and “depressed” when they saw how big the abortion clinic was, sometimes feeling like “all hope was lost.”

“If you go from that moment to seeing the building closing, it is unbelievable,” he said.

Located alongside the busy Gulf Freeway in Houston’s East End, a Hispanic neighborhood near the University of Houston, which has 50,000 students, the Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast’s Prevention Park location also houses the Gulf Coast administrative offices.

It was also the center for several of Planned Parenthood’s global initiatives, according to Seago, and the location of some of the “most horrific” scenes of the undercover videos published by the Center for Medical Progress in 2015. It is also at the heart of the $1.8 billion Medicaid fraud lawsuit brought by the state of Texas in 2022.

“The thousands of pro-lifers that have prayed outside of it” over the years “are celebrating,” Carney said.

“For so long the Church has been taught its teachings were archaic,” he said, but these closures show that the culture is finally waking up to “the teachings of natural law.”

The closure of the abortion giant’s largest clinic, which both Seago and Carney called “symbolic,” follows more than two dozen other Planned Parenthood clinic closures in recent months.

The latest closure comes after years of funding cuts by the Texas Legislature, which slashed funding for Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers in 2011, leading to 82 clinic closures statewide, and barred Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid program in 2021 after a legal battle.

In 2019, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 22 prohibiting local governments from contracting with Planned Parenthood for any services, including non-abortion care.

The Trump administration’s recent signature legislative victory, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, includes a provision that ends Medicaid payments for one year to abortion providers like Planned Parenthood. A federal judge blocked the provision on July 28, however, after issuing a partial preliminary injunction last week.

Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast President and CEO Melaney Linton said in a statement to the Houston Chronicle that “having to reduce [Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast’s] staffing and future footprint in Houston is heartbreaking, infuriating, and the direct result of these sustained political attacks.”

Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, which has been operating in the Houston area for more than 90 years, operates six clinics in Greater Houston and two in Louisiana. It will close its Prevention Park and Southwest clinics on Sept. 30. The four remaining Houston clinics will be acquired by affiliate Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas.

Once the four remaining clinics in Houston are acquired, Planned Parenthood Greater Texas will operate 22 clinics in the state. Seven other clinics in the San Antonio area are operated by Planned Parenthood South Texas.

The clinics rely on donor support now that so much of their funding has been cut, according to a spokesperson for the Gulf Coast affiliate.