For Tisch senior Sam Del Rio, Planned Parenthood’s Manhattan clinic was where she went during her sophomore year when she needed STI testing and prevention services. Only three blocks east of the Paulson Center, the clinic was an accessible alternative to NYU’s Student Health Center — where she struggled to schedule appointments due to high demand and was met with large, out-of-pocket costs for gynecological services without NYU’s health insurance.
“I thought that I came down with something, and then got tested negative, and I went consistently for around a month,” Del Rio, who co-founded the Feminist Theatre Company at the Tisch School of the Arts, said. “That’s something I don’t think I would be able to do at NYU, just because we have so many students. The insurance is a big barrier for a lot of students.”
Now, after 36 years of providing low-cost services to NYU students and New York City residents alike, Planned Parenthood’s sole Manhattan location will no longer see patients starting Nov. 1, the organization told WSN.
The announcement, which Del Rio called “truly devastating,” first came in March when Planned Parenthood of Greater New York stated that it would close the clinic because of inadequate funding from private insurers and the state’s Medicaid program.
“26 Bleecker Street has always been a special place — from serving all who turn to us, to training providers who positively impact the sexual and reproductive health care landscape in Manhattan,” PPGNY President and CEO Wendy Stark said in a press release that month. “We see a future where we can build a new state-of-the-art health center in Manhattan, similar to our health centers in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. The first step is putting the building on the market.”
PPGNY also cited “rising costs of maintaining an older building” as a factor that led to the upcoming closure. Although it will stop seeing patients starting next month, the clinic cannot officially close until it receives approval from the New York City Department of Health, PPGNY Communications Director Senti Sojwal said in an email to WSN.
The closure comes amid the Trump administration’s broader efforts to limit abortion access. CAS junior and co-president of NYU’s Feminist Society Barney Riley, told WSN she had an immediate “feeling of discouragement” upon learning about the clinic’s closure in March.
“It’s such a clear representation of how the federal funding cuts are causing severe financial constraints for health care providers like Planned Parenthood,” Riley said. “There are other factors, of course, like the high cost of rent in New York City, but that’s no excuse for closing the one and only location of Planned Parenthood in Manhattan.”
Gallatin senior Mina Farahmand, who is a member of NYU’s chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America, said she is concerned about how the closure could affect local students and residents who depend on the clinic for its reproductive health care. While NYU has vending machines with $15 emergency contraceptives throughout campus, Farahmand said she often sees them unstocked.
“A lot of NYU students would go [to Planned Parenthood] for abortion services because the NYU health center doesn’t provide those services,” Farahmand said. “The Student Health Center will send you to NYU Langone.”
NYU-sponsored Wellfleet insurance began covering all abortions in 2023. But Del Rio, who is not on the university’s health insurance plan, relies on Planned Parenthood.
“The only people who have the availability to get an abortion through NYU are people who are on their insurance,” Del Rio said. “So I would not be surprised if this also directly impacts low-income students who do not have access to Wellfleet insurance because it’s so unbelievably expensive and inaccessible.”
Del Rio said she is also particularly concerned for students from states where abortion has already been restricted or fully banned, making the Planned Parenthood clinic in NoHo one of their only sources of reproductive health care.
Following PPGNY’s March announcement, the Trump administration notified nine Planned Parenthood branches that it would withhold their Title X funding. In July, Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” — which placed a one-year pause on federal funding to major abortion providers — put nearly 200 Planned Parenthood facilities at risk of closure, 90% of which are located in states where abortion has remained legal after Roe v. Wade was reversed in 2022.
Abortions, however, only make up 4% of the services provided by Planned Parenthood. Defunding the organization means also limiting access to its HIV testing and treatment, cancer screenings, contraception and gender-affirming care.
Though NYU Langone Health was pressured to reinstate gender-affirming care after denying it to at least two children in February, the future accessibility of such services remains uncertain.
“With Plan B being left unstocked at NYU vending machines, Planned Parenthood leaving Manhattan and NYU refusing to offer abortion services to students on site, we must organize and build campaigns to win NYU and New York as a fortress of reproductive health care,” Farahmand said. “We must fight back every step of the way.”
Contact Evan Barragate at [email protected].