What are the most common reasons for visits to Planned Parenthood clinics?

1. What advocates and critics both cite: the headline numbers that shape debate

The most consistent numerical picture across the provided analyses is that STI testing/treatment and contraceptive services are the top categories of care at Planned Parenthood affiliates. Statista’s compilation for 2022–2023 lists roughly 4.63 million STI-related services and about 2.25 million contraceptive services, while the Planned Parenthood Federation of America annual report tallies similar magnitudes: 2,223,680 patients receiving birth-control information/services and 5,132,330 receiving STI testing/treatment ^{[1] [2]}. A 2017 overview likewise highlighted contraceptive access at 31 percent of services and STI care at 45 percent, with abortion procedures around 3 percent in that snapshot ^[3]. These figures have been repeatedly invoked in public debate to argue that Planned Parenthood’s primary role is preventive reproductive health care rather than abortion provision ^{[3] [1]}.

2. How the affiliate annual report frames service volume and categories

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s 2023–2024 annual summary provides raw patient counts that emphasize preventive and routine reproductive care: birth control and STI services account for the largest patient volumes, with cancer screenings and other reproductive services also present but smaller in scale. The report explicitly lists 2.22 million birth-control-related patients and over 5.13 million STI testing/treatment patients, signaling the organization’s operational emphasis on widespread, often repeatable services rather than single-event procedures ^[2]. The annual report mentions abortion as a service but does not always break out every abortion procedure in the same way as recurring services, which can make proportional comparisons sensitive to methodology choices and the difference between “services” and “patients” ^[2].

3. Reconciling differing metrics: services, patients, and procedures matter

Different sources employ different denominators—“services” versus “patients” versus “procedures”—and this affects how large each category looks. Statista counts services provided (listing 4.63 million STI services, 2.25 million contraceptive services, and around 392,715 abortion services), while the PF A annual report lists patient counts that highlight contraception and STI care ^{[1] [2]}. The 2017 analysis that found abortion at roughly 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s health-care services used an earlier aggregation approach; later 2022–2023 data show abortion-related services numbering in the hundreds of thousands but still well below STI and contraceptive service counts ^{[3] [1]}. Methodological differences explain much of the apparent variance; comparing like-with-like is critical before drawing conclusions about shares.

4. Evidence, omissions, and what the sources don’t fully tell us

Source materials emphasize volume of preventive care, but several important caveats remain unreported or under-specified. The annual report and the Statista aggregation do not always show whether a “service” equals a single visit, a test, a counseling session, or a multi-step procedure, nor do they always separate follow-up visits from distinct patients ^{[2] [1]}. The 2017 piece and later materials acknowledge this and caution that different reporting periods and categories can shift apparent shares ^[3]. Additionally, some commentaries focus on high-profile controversies like fetal tissue research or political attacks, which can skew public attention away from routine care statistics even when those routine services form the bulk of visits ^{[4] [5]}.

5. How interpretations vary and what agendas to watch for

Analyses from advocacy-aligned and neutral compilers converge on the same general pattern—preventive sexual and reproductive health services dominate clinic activity—but political actors selectively highlight data to support policy aims. Pro-choice advocates emphasize the high volume of contraception and STI care to argue that defunding harms broad public-health access; critics and some political opponents emphasize abortion services to frame the organization politically ^{[5] [4] [1]}. The presence of public-health defenders framing fetal-tissue research debates as a separate issue also illustrates how controversy-driven narratives can shift focus away from routine-care metrics, so users should treat partisan framing as likely to highlight particular subsets of the data ^{[4] [5]}.

6. Bottom line: most common reasons for visits, and how confident we can be

Across the provided materials, the clearest, most recent, and most consistent finding is that STI testing/treatment and contraceptive/birth-control services are the most common reasons people visit Planned Parenthood clinics, with cancer screening and other reproductive services trailing, and abortion-related services representing a smaller share of total services or patient interactions in the published aggregates ^{[1] [2] [3]}. Confidence in this conclusion is high given the convergence of multiple data summaries, but precise percentage shares depend on reporting methodology: whether counts are of services, patients, or discrete procedures—and whether follow-up visits are counted separately—so readers should treat headline percentages with attention to those definitions ^{[2] [1] [3]}.