VOUX MAG

Ticket costs for Saturday's potential Final Four preview featuring No. 1 Michigan and No. 3 Duke in Washington, D.C., went from expensive to astronomical on the resale marketplace this week.

The Wolverines (25-1), the projected No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, and Blue Devils (24-2) are currently leading their respective conferences and are frontrunners to cut down the nets in Indianapolis in April.

Billed as the "Duel in the District," the pairing is making for a hot ticket with available tickets fetching four figures for the Saturday night (6:30 p.m. ET) showdown.

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VividSeats listed single seats located in the upper reaches of Capital One Arena's second deck behind the basket starting at $348 on Wednesday. The cheapest pair of lower-level tickets was $1,191, and two 100-level seats at midcourt were going for $6,520.

For premium ticket shoppers, SeatGeek listed courtside seats -- "Gold North, Row AAA," meaning a folding chair with your shoe soles on the hardwood -- for $7,974 per ticket. With fees, the cost runs to $15,946.22.

--Field Level Media

SURPRISE, Ariz. (AP) — The No. 2 official of the baseball players' association was shaken by the events culminating in the resignation of union head Tony Clark and said the change in leadership will not alter bargaining preparations ahead of talks in which Major League Baseball is expected to push for a salary cap.

"Just on a personal level I think we're all fairly devasted by things that have happened in the last 48, 72 hours," deputy executive director Bruce Meyer said Wednesday. "I'm not going to go beyond that in terms of personal feelings, but it's fair to say that we were all personally upset, concerned about Tony. But I think this was something that the players determined had to happen at this particular point in time."

A former All-Star first baseman who headed the union since 2013,Clark resigned Tuesdayjust months ahead of the expected start of bargaining for alabor contract to replace the deal that expires Dec. 1.

He was asked to resign by the union's eight-man executive subcommittee after an investigation by the union's outside counsel discovered evidence Clark had an inappropriate relationship with his sister-in-law, a union employee since 2023, a person familiar with the union's deliberations told The Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because that was not announced.

"The information that really led to this came out within the last ... 72 hours or so," Meyer said. "So this is not something that has been kind of sat on. When the information came out the players on the subcommittee made their feelings known. And Tony, to his credit, he's always been about the players first and Tony decided to take the action he did in the interest of the players."

Clark did not respond to a text seeking comment.

The start of annual tour of spring training camps by union officials was pushed back a day and began Wednesday with the Kansas City Royals.

The union's executive board was to meet online for the second straight day and Royals player representative John Schreiber said he expects a decision late Wednesday on a successor to lead the union through collective bargaining.

"We'll see how the meeting goes today," Schreiber said. "We're going on the right path and we'll have a decision shortly."

Meyer, hired by Clark in 2018, headed the 2021-22 negotiations that led to an agreement on March 10 that ended a 99-day lockout. Meyer was promoted to deputy executive director in July 2022.

"I don't anticipate that anybody's going to be leading negotiations other than me," Meyer said.

Clark's departure took placeduring a probeby the U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn, New York, into OneTeam Partners, a licensing company founded by the union, the NFL Players Association and RedBird Capital Partners in 2019.

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"There have been some issues hanging over, as you know, and in some respects it's good to get them out of the way sooner rather than later," Meyer said.

Meyer said the union's entire executive board of 72 players is eligible to vote for executive director: the executive subcommittee, 30 major league team player representatives and 34 minor leaguers, who have beenrepresented by the union since 2022.

MLB appears on track to propose a salary cap, which possibly could lead to a work stoppage that causes regular-season games to be canceled for the first time since 1995.

"We don't expect anything to change in terms of bargaining," Meyer said. "We've been preparing for bargaining for years. Players have been preparing. Players know what's coming. At the end of the day leadership is important and leadership comes and goes, but what remains is the players. At the end of the day, it's the players who determine the direction of the union. At the end of the day, it's the players who determine our priorities and bargaining. Those priorities obviously have not changed and will not change."

The union said it will resist a salary cap.

"Our position and the historic position of this union for decades on a salary cap is well known," Meyer said. "It's the ultimate restriction. It's something that owners in all the sports have wanted more than anything and in baseball in particular there's a reason for that, because it's good for them and not good for players."

The 64-year-old Meyer spent 30 years at Weil, Gotshal & Manges before joining the NHL Players Association in 2016 as senior director of collective bargaining, policy and legal. He wouldn't say whether he wants to succeed Clark as union head.

Meyer wouldn't directly address whether the union intends to restrict the hiring of family members.

"I think it's fair to say there are issues that will be addressed," he said. "There are various issues that will be evaluated, re-evaluated with the advice of counsel and, as always, at the direction of players."

AP Baseball Writer Ronald Blum contributed to this report.

AP MLB:https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

With the fresh fantasy baseball season approaching, it's time to get you some tiered rankings from my Shuffle Up series. Use these for salary cap drafts, straight drafts, keeper decisions or merely a view of how the position ebbs and flows. We've already handled all the hitters; now, we move to the mound.

Starting pitchers in fantasy baseball are similar to running backs in fantasy football. The position will generally be riddled with injuries. We'll want to have several speculation plays on our bench, guys who just need one thing to click. And getting this position right — or running lucky at this position — is probably the most important part of your fantasy season.

[Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Baseball league for the 2026 MLB season]

In past years, I would often be the last manager to address starting pitching, blanching at the uncertainty. Occasionally, I had success with this concept (one year I won the Yahoo Friends & Family League despite not drafting a starter; I did build a staff later) but I've since discarded the idea as a -EV strategy.

I want to proactively build my staff, like most of my competitors, at the draft. And I'll have to live with the variance like anyone else.

The numbers are unscientific in nature and meant to reflect where talent clusters and drops off. Assume a 5x5 scoring system, as usual, and away we go.

More Tiered Rankings

• Catcher

• First Base

• Second Base

• Shortstop

• Third Base

• Outfield

• Starting Pitcher

• Relief Pitcher

The Big Tickets

• $43 Tarik Skubal

• $41 Paul Skenes

• $39 Garrett Crochet

• $36 Cristopher Sánchez

• $35 Yoshinobu Yamamoto

• $35 Hunter Brown

• $34 Logan Webb

• $32 Logan Gilbert

• $31 Jacob deGrom

• $30 Chris Sale

If you're open to a high-priced ace but would prefer to start with a hitter, pray that Crochet slips to the second part of your draft. He's in the prime of his career, tied to a team expected to contend for the playoffs and not reliant on a max-velocity fastball. Crochet will also be helped by his defense — the infield might be in flux, but the outfielders are all excellent, and the catching is also above average. Crochet was a little homer-prone at Fenway but still dominant there, and no one touched him on the road (2.25/1.00). The Red Sox were right to go all-in on Chris Sale once upon a time, and history repeated itself when it cleared out the prospect chest for Crochet last year.

Because the Dodgers already have nine toes in the playoffs, I'm going to be careful with workload projections for everyone on staff. Los Angeles will basically run a six-man rotation all year, and anytime a pitcher has the slightest hiccup with their arms and elbows, a rest is to be expected. Yamamoto is the only L.A. pitcher who's qualified for the ERA title over the last three years (162 innings), and he's also the only returning Dodger starter who logged more than 91 innings last year.

Webb is 60 innings ahead of the field over the past three years and working in San Francisco mitigates some of his mistakes. With a good-but-not-elite strikeout clip and a ground-ball bias, we have to accept that in some starts, Webb will get crushed by BABIP misfortune. And you have to be okay with his fastball checking in at an ordinary 92.6 mph. But Webb looks like a perfect fourth-round target to me.

DeGrom's inning count has turned into an unsolvable SAT question. Starting in 2021 and cutting off the partials, this is what we're looking at: 92, 64, 30, 10, 172. He's moving into his age-38 season. Maybe it's a fool's errand to suppose any pitcher has a legitimate floor, but I know deGrom at this stage doesn't have one. My heart will always be invested in deGrom, so I'll avoid doubling down with fantasy investment. You have to decide for yourself.

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Legitimate Building Blocks

• $28 Bryan Woo

• $27 Hunter Greene

• $26 Max Fried

• $25 Cole Ragans

• $25 Joe Ryan

• $25 Freddy Peralta

• $23 Framber Valdez

• $23 Jesús Luzardo

• $22 George Kirby

• $22 Dylan Cease

• $20 Blake Snell

• $19 Kyle Bradish

• $18 Nick Pivetta

Rotator cuff problems cost Ragans more than half of his season, but the rest of his results were a cause of bad luck — everyreasonable ERA estimatorsays he should have been in the mid-2s, not the 4.67 number on the back of his card. Ragans gave us a reminder of his upside with 13 return innings in September, striking out 22. There's no reason why he can't return to his 2024 level of production (3.14/1.14, fourth in Cy Young voting).

Cease was a frustrating case last year, as he piled up 215 strikeouts but gave us hurtful ratios (4.55/1.33). Toronto's defense should help him turn more batted events into outs. Maybe he's not going to challenge for the Cy Young again, but normalized sequencing should give him a mid-3s ERA, and he's proven to be durable. Don't let his standard stats scare you off.

Talk Them Up, Talk Them Down

• $17 Nolan McLean

• $17 Tyler Glasnow

• $15 Kevin Gausman

• $14 Eury Pérez

• $13 Sonny Gray

• $13 Luis Castillo

• $13 Trey Yesavage

• $13 Robbie Ray

• $13 Cam Schlittler

• $13 Zack Wheeler

• $13 Spencer Strider

• $13 Nathan Eovaldi

• $13 Michael King

• $12 Brandon Woodruff

• $12 Shane Bieber

• $12 Sandy Alcantara

• $12 Jacob Misiorowski

• $12 Gavin Williams

• $12 Chase Burns

• $12 Trevor Rogers

• $12 Shota Imanaga

• $12 MacKenzie Gore

• $12 Andrew Abbott

• $11 Emmet Sheehan

• $11 Nick Lodolo

• $11 Bubba Chandler

• $11 Ranger Suárez

• $11 Shohei Ohtani

• $11 Cade Horton

• $10 Ryan Pepiot

• $10 Tanner Bibee

• $10 Carlos Rodón

• $10 Jack Flaherty

The Brewers have become the new Rays, the low-market team that makes better decisions than just about everyone else and winds up in the tournament every fall. Thus, I want to be proactive with their high-upside arms like Misiorowski and Henderson, while fully understanding that the team will be careful with workloads and pitch counts. If Misiorowski even gets to 24 starts, he probably returns his spring draft cost.

The early market is not bullish on Abbott, which means he can actually be worse than last year and still return a profit. Regress-and-win players are my jam. The strikeouts will play, andfly-ball pitchersare misunderstood — at least they're showing control of their outcomes.

The Marlins are ready to take the training wheels off with Pérez, and it's hard to unsee that tidy 0.96 WHIP he had over his final 16 starts. With the Tommy John surgery firmly in the background, Pérez is poised for a possible breakout. Hopefully, he doesn't feel like he needs to strike out the world — the Marlins have a problematic defense.

Some Plausible Upside

• $9 Drew Rasmussen

• $9 Shane McClanahan

• $9 Matthew Boyd

• $8 Merrill Kelly

• $8 Zac Gallen

• $7 Shane Baz

• $7 Edward Cabrera

• $6 Bailey Ober

• $6 David Peterson

• $6 Joe Musgrove

• $6 *Gerrit Cole

• $5 Aaron Nola

• $5 Tatsuya Imai

• $5 Bryce Miller

• $5 Jameson Taillon

Peruse theBoyd splitsand you might abandon the case — 12 of his wins were at home but he was a mess on the road, and his breakout stopped in the second half (4.63/1.19). And last season was his first full year starting out of six. But the Cubs have a top-five defense and a top-five lineup to support Boyd, and Yahoo rooms are giving you a reasonable 197.6 ticket. I can sign off.

Ober has always been a curious case, a 6-foot-9 righty withbelow-average velocity. A hip problem was probably responsible for his messy 2025; his three years prior gave us a 3.66 ERA and 1.03 WHIP. He's well priced for profit, even if the Minnesota defense is no longer an asset.

Nola routinely comes upshort of his expected statsto the point that you have to accept it as part of his profile. And even if that horrible 6.01 ERA was reduced to his 4.58 FIP, it's not like either stat helps you. His fastball has lost velocity for four straight seasons and homers, always a problem, hit a new low last season. Nola might seem like a tantalizing name pick at a reduced ADP, but I'm not chasing him on the back-9 of a slowly-fading career.

Bargain Bin

• $4 José Soriano

• $4 Roki Sasaki

• $4 Noah Cameron

• $4 Quinn Priester

• $4 Logan Henderson

• $4 Clay Holmes

• $4 Seth Lugo

• $3 Connelly Early

• $3 Ryne Nelson

• $3 Kris Bubic

• $3 Mitch Keller

• $3 Casey Mize

• $3 Michael Wacha

• $3 Sean Manaea

• $3 Shane Smith

• $3 Chris Bassitt

• $3 Brayan Bello

• $3 Ryan Weathers

• $3 Zebby Matthews

• $3 *Corbin Burnes

• $2 Yusei Kikuchi

• $2 Jack Leiter

• $2 Zach Eflin

• $2 Brady Singer

• $2 Reynaldo López

• $2 Parker Messick

• $2 *Hurston Waldrep

• $2 Ian Seymour

• $2 Brandon Pfaadt

• $2 Kodai Senga

• $2 José Berríos

• $2 Justin Verlander

• $2 Max Meyer

• $2 Lucas Giolito

• $2 Braxton Garrett

• $2 Dustin May

• $2 Cody Ponce

• $2 Matthew Liberatore

• $2 Dean Kremer

• $1 *Spencer Schwellenbach

• $1 *Grayson Rodriguez

• $1 Cade Cavalli

• $1 Jeffrey Springs

• $1 Joey Cantillo

• $1 Troy Melton

• $1 Will Warren

• $1 Braxton Ashcraft

• $1 Michael McGreevy

• $1 Luis Severino

• $1 Slade Cecconi

• $1 Mike Burrows

• $1 Chad Patrick

• $1 Jonah Tong

• $1 Zack Littell

• $1 Eduardo Rodríguez

• $1 Tyler Mahle

• $1 Payton Tolle

Senga has a wide range of outcomes — you could imagine him being in a playoff rotation come October, but he's also not guaranteed to make the Mets out of training camp. Maybe Senga's second-half collapse was mostly about hamstring problems, but keep in mind he's 33 and we're three years removed from his last full season.

With someone like Matthews, we follow the strikeout rate and the prospect pedigree and hope he can improve the control. His ultimate success will come down to finding a solution against lefties, who slashed .316/.372/.572 against him last year.

ABC; The CW

After finding herself caught up in the ongoingAmerica's Next Top Modelreckoning,The ViewcohostWhoopi Goldberghas publicly apologized for laughing at a formerANTMcontestant's expense onTyra Banks' modeling reality show.

In response to finding out thatNetflix's newReality Check: Inside America's Next Top Modeldocuseries included brief 2010 clip of Goldberg laughing atcycle 14 contestant AlexandraUnderwood falling off of a runway plagued by moving pendulums, the Oscar-winningGhostactress offered an apology to the model on Wednesday's live episode of the talk show.

"Here's something I want to do, because in this documentary there's a clip from our show, where I had showed the ladies this thing. Now, this was, to me, one of the funniest things I had ever seen in my life," Goldberg, 70, said as old footage played of her onThe Viewlaughing at Underwood's spill — which saw a giant pendulum knock the model off of a runway during the cycle 14 competition.

"You still say that," panelistSara Hainesadded, which Goldberg confirmed.

Daniel Garriga/CBS Photo Archive/Getty; Netflix

"I do. I know, but I wanted to apologize, because there's a person who got knocked off there, and her name is Alexandra Underwood from cycle 14. I'm sorry I laughed at this," Goldberg said. "I couldn't help it, it was funny as hell. But, I am telling you it's one of the funniest things, if I had to point to something, it is one of the funniest thing I've sever seen."

Haines again cut in to save Goldberg's apology, hugging Goldberg as she quipped, "What she means is she's sorry she's still laughing about it!"

Guest cohost Savannah Chrisley jumped in to add, "Back then, I'm sorry, we're held to a different standard now. People tip-toe a lot more in today's day and age," which prompted Goldberg to clarify her words again.

Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with ourEW Dispatch newsletter.

"I have fallen down. You have to take it when people are laughing, but this is maybe 10 years ago, and she's a grown-up now, a grown woman, maybe she's got kids, and I just wanted her to know that I wasn't laughing [at her], I was laughing because to me people slipping and falling [is funny]," Goldberg said.

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Comedian Joy Behar finished the segment by voicing a long-standing adage: "When I fall, it's tragedy. When you fall, it's comedy."

Entertainment Weeklyhas reached out to Underwood for a response.

Hulu; Amazon Prime

The Viewcohost's words join a wealth ofANTMpersonalities who also spoke out about the show.Reality Checkincludes multiple interviews with Banks, former judges Jay Manuel, Nigel Barker, and Miss J. Alexander, as well as multiple contestants and producer Ken Mok.

Topics covered include allegations of sexual harassment and instances where models were tasked with darkening their skin to portray women of different races in photo shoots.

EW previously conducted a 20th anniversary oral history onANTMwith 14 past contestants speaking out onshocking moments from the program, including the switching-races shoots that took place on cycles 4 and 14.

"I kept saying, 'You guys are putting me in blackface,'"cycle 13's Jennifer An previously told EW, alleging that the show's team pinned her hair "so they could 'fro my hair out" to complete her evolution into a woman with African heritage. "They definitely didn't show any of that footage."

In a statement to EW at the time of the 2023 interviews, a spokesperson for Banks said that the intention of the shoots were to combat an industry where "lighter skin and straight hair were pervasive beauty standards," which "perpetuated deep insecurities within women." The spokesperson maintained that such shoots were "meant to be a moment celebrating and spotlighting underrepresented ideologies of beauty — textured hair and darker skin — on a global scale."

Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Modelis now streaming on Netflix.

Read the original article onEntertainment Weekly

An official trailer for season 4 of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives was released on Feb. 18, and once again, MomTok's future seems uncertain

NEED TO KNOW

• The sneak peek shows big moments for the reality stars, like Taylor Frankie Paul's casting as The Bachelorette and Whitney Leavitt and Jennifer Affleck on Dancing with the Stars

• The show's highly anticipated upcoming installment will premiere on March 12 on Hulu

The Secret Lives of Mormon Wivesis returning for a fourth season, and MomTok is looking to be as full of drama as ever.

Theofficial trailerfor the upcoming installment of the Hulu reality series was released on Wednesday, Feb. 18, and it spotlights all of the cast members' biggest recent achievements. As always, the high-highs — likeTaylor Frankie Paul's casting asThe BacheloretteandWhitney LeavittandJennifer Affleck's run onDancing with the Stars— are complemented by some tough blows teased in the sneak peek.

"Everyone is going after their dreams, but it potentially could pull us apart,"Layla Taylorsays at one point in the trailer, which also glimpses her appearance walking in New York Fashion Week.

Many were left wondering whether or not Demi Engemann would be moving forward with the series after she was at the center of several controversies shown during season 3, from herVanderpump Villafallout to her Halloween party run-in with Chase McWhorter and more. She was also notably absent fromthe season 4 teaser trailerreleased in January and is not featured alongside the cast in the official artwork for the new season.

However, Engemann is confirmed to be part of the cast, though the trailer sees her peering down alternative career paths, like singing. One snippet sees her crooning into a microphone, seemingly recording a song.

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Relationships will also wind up and unravel over the course of season 4. Less than two weeks ago, Taylor confirmedshe split fromher boyfriendmMason McWhorter,in an emotionalTikTok video. In the trailer, though, the now-exes are seen showing affection at an earlier point in their romance.

One year out from Paul's breakup with ex Dakota Mortensen, she is shown telling confessional cameras, "It's time for me to do whatever I want to do with whoever I want to do." While the details of her pursuits have yet to be revealed, the group is shown hanging out with fellow reality starHarry Jowsey.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE'sfree daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Even with specifics left to be seen in episodes to come, the group is sure to be tested as they balance their personal lives with their presence on a public stage. Later in the trailer, Paul can be seen crying in a hospital bed just after Jessi Ngatikaura asks aloud, "Is she gonna be a pregnantBachelorette?"

Season 4 ofThe Secret Lives of Mormon Wiveswill premiere on March 12, with all 10 episodes streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.

Read the original article onPeople

Mere days into herweek-long guest-cohosting gigonThe View, reality starSavannah Chrisleyhas already been shut down by the permanent panelists over a false claim she made about Rep.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The moment came at the top of Wednesday's broadcast, as the cohosts led the show's Hot Topics discussion about Ocasio-Cortez's heavily criticized handling of a question about Taiwan at the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 13.

AsJoy Beharcountered pushback to AOC's response — which included the New York congresswoman pausing for several moments during the scattered reply — she urged critics to focus on Donald Trump's multiple on-camera mishaps instead: "Check him out before you start attacking AOC," the 83-year-old quipped.

"Mispronouncing a word is totally different than not knowing your position on Taiwan. What's important is how you recover from something. Trump, he's done things, and then he's continued on with his speech, and then continued on to meet with world leaders. So, the recovery is what matters, and AOC just didn't have a recovery," theChrisley Knows Bestpersonality said, while Behar stressed, "He does it over and over again, how about the quantity?"

ModeratorWhoopi Goldbergreplied to Chrisley by stressing that Trump "is the president," and that she can put up with fumbled answers "from congresspeople" because in that case "that's on you." But, she "can't take it from the guy who says he's the leader of the free world."

Still, Chrisley dug in, claiming, "I understand that wholeheartedly. AOC, though, is also the Democrats' pick for the next election."

The panel quickly pushed back at Chrisley's assessment, with Goldberg andSara Hainesshaking their heads while the Oscar-winningGhostactress repeated, "No, no, no!" while Behar added, "You better tell that to Gavin Newsom!"

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Legal expertSunny Hostinthen elaborated, pointing out that Ocasio-Cortez has "made it pretty clear that she's not running for president" in 2028.

Ocasio-Cortez recently maintained that she's not entering the 2028 race for president following Trump's second term, stressing to theNew York Timesthat she attended the conference in Munich "not because I'm running for president, not because I've made some kind of decision about a horse race or a candidacy, but because we need to sound the alarm bells that a lot of those folks in nicely pressed suits in that room will not be there much longer if we do not do something about the runaway inequality that is fueling far-right populist movements."

Stephani Spindel/VIEWpress via Getty

Chrisley is at the Hot Topics table through the week, filling in for fellow conservative personalityAlyssa Farah Griffin, who temporarily departed the show last week afterthe birth of her first son.

Other guest panelists slated to sit in Griffin's seat during her maternity leave include Amanda Carpenter, Sheryl Underwood, comedian Whitney Cummings, and formerViewcohost Elisabeth Hasselbeck, whopublicly slammed Behar and the show in early 2025.

The Viewairs weekdays on ABC.

Read the original article onEntertainment Weekly

Dozens of abortion clinics closed in the US after the Supreme Court Dobbs decision revoked the federal right to an abortion in June 2022 — mostly in states that enacted bans. But the churn has continued, leaving even states with some of the most protective abortion policies to do more with less.

There were 753 brick-and-mortar abortion clinics in the US at the end of 2025, according toa new reportby the Guttmacher Institute — ​54 fewer than in ​2020, including a net loss of 12 abortion clinics since March 2024.

"Running a clinic in an environment like we have today is oftentimes not sustainable," said ​Brittany Fonteno, president and CEO of the National Abortion Federation. Both financial and community support play critical roles, she said.

In New York, abortion is legal and protected; voters enshrined the right to abortion in the state's constitution in 2024. But the state has eight fewer abortion clinics than it did at the start of 2024, Guttmacher data shows, one of the most significant decreases in that timeframe nationwide.

Among the clinics that closed last year was a Planned Parenthood in New York City, the nonprofit's only location in Manhattan.

The closure was "a big blow," said Chelsea Williams-Diggs, executive director of the New York Abortion Access Fund.

"All clinic closures are a travesty," she said. "But the Planned Parenthood on Bleecker Street was a powerhouse of a clinic that was able to do so much for folks."

Planned Parenthood typically accepts a wider set of insurance coverage than smaller independent clinics can, and locations in New York could often enroll eligible patients in Medicaid on the same day as their appointment. The clinic in Manhattan was also one of a small and shrinking number that provide abortions after the first trimester, which can be particularly expensive.

"That has direct impacts on abortion access and on abortion funds," Williams-Diggs said. "If more folks don't have health insurance, if more folks are strained economically, that means more folks will be calling NYAAF to help them pay for an essential health care service."

In a statement about the closure, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York said that "the gap between inflation and stagnant reimbursement rates has forced us to make difficult but necessary decisions."

Additionalmoves by the Trump administrationhave further strained clinics, including a block on Medicaid reimbursement to large abortion providers. Planned Parenthood closed more than 50 health centers last year, some of which provided abortion care.

Clinics are left with "unsustainable financial realities," said Angela Vasquez-Giroux, vice president of communications for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

"When a health center is forced to close, all patients lose access to their trusted provider, and entire communities are left unable to get high-quality reproductive health care, including abortion in many places," she said. "These are not easy decisions to make."

It's important to track changes to the number of brick-and-mortar abortion clinics in the US, said ​Rachel Jones, a principal research scientist with Guttmacher and lead author of the new report. But the overall change in the number of clinics is only one measure of abortion access that can mask a lot of nuance, she said.

"If it's a place that doesn't advertise that they provide abortion care, then it's not really accessible to a lot of people. If it's a place that only takes private health insurance or you have to be a pre-existing client, that's not necessarily going to make abortion care accessible to people," Jones said. "If you want a procedural abortion and they only offer medication abortion then you might still have to travel outside of your community or even to another state to access care."

Since the Dobbs decision, the number of people who travel out-of-state for abortion care each year has doubled — and about a quarter of those who travel go to Illinois.

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The state has become a critical access point for abortion care, welcoming tens of thousands of patients from other states each year — but there are fewer clinics to serve this surge in patients. Illinois had 31 brick-and-mortar abortion clinics at the end of 2025, two fewer than in March 2024, according to the new Guttmacher report.

However, experts say that a strong network of support from the community and policymakers make Illinois particularly resilient. So while number of clinics in the state dropped overall, there were some important additions.

Hope Clinic opened a second location in Illinois last summer, offering abortions up to 34 weeks and other reproductive health care services in the uptown neighborhood of Chicago.

Clinic co-owner Julie Burkhart said that the team started talking about where another clinic might be needed in the country soon after the Dobbs decision, but it took nearly three full years to open their doors in Chicago. About half of that time was spent on construction after purchasing a building.

"We took a look around the country to see where abortion care, specifically later in pregnancy, would be needed and essential for people in this country, and it seemed that Chicago, was the best point for us to locate a new clinic," Burkhart said. "But these projects definitely don't happen overnight."

Telehealth abortion — with medication abortion provided to patients through the mail — has become increasingly common since it first became an option in late 2021.

In the first half of 2025, more than a quarter of all abortions within the US health care system were provided via telehealth, up from less than 10% in the first half of 2023, according todata from #WeCount, a project sponsored by the Society of Family Planning.

But the vast majority of abortions still happen in person, sometimes because of individual preference and sometimes because it's necessary.

And experts say that later abortions that require in-person care are becoming more common amid post-Dobbs restrictions.

"When there are abortion bans and people can't get access to the care they need earlier in pregnancy, that doesn't necessarily stop their need for that care," Fonteno said. "So one of the outcomes of abortion bans is seeing people be pushed further into their pregnancy by the time they get the care that they need, so we are seeing more providers focus on sort of this specialty form of abortion care."

Hope Clinics in Illinois have seen patients from 28 different states, Burkhart said.

"I think that that really illustrates how critical our clinics are," she said.

There is also concern among abortion advocates that the federal government may put new limits on access to medication abortion, which could further strain clinic resources.

The Trump administration isconducting its own reviewabout the safety and efficacy of one of the drugs used in medication abortion to investigate how it can be safely dispensed, despite clinical studies and decades of use that have established the drug's safety and effectiveness.

But providers are already thinking through possible contingency plans, Fonteno said.

"One of the things that is so incredible about abortion providers is that there's a lot of resilience and a lot of energy to continue to innovate and think about different ways to provide care," Fonteno said. "Brick-and-mortar clinics will always have a place in communities across the country."

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