On July 4, 2025, President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law, which meant 100 million dollars in cuts to federal Medicaid reimbursements. This major financial loss led to Planned Parenthood clinics shutting down across the country, leaving many without essential sexual healthcare. As a means of survival, the Planned Parenthood Mar Monte affiliate, which consists of thirty health centres in California and Nevada, announced an expansion of services, including perimenopause care, IV hydration and cosmetic injectables – yes, like Botox and fillers. 

This turn towards beauty was met with both praise and concern when it was announced earlier this year. Some saw it was a crucial way to make up for the loss of income and stay afloat. For others, it reaffirmed the larger, alarming message that sexual healthcare isn’t worthy of its own funding without being cushioned by the beauty industry, or that cosmetic tweakments should be considered essential healthcare for women. To make matters even more complicated, the idea of adding aesthetic services onto Planned Parenthood’s already extensive roster of care actually predates the recent revenue loss.

“We’ve been talking about providing some of these new services for years,” says Andrew Adams, chief of staff at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte. For Adams, a lightbulb moment came when one of his patients mentioning experiencing botched filler as a result of at-home injectables – a solution she turned to owing to the unaffordability of med spas. “We realised our patients were getting it and they wanted us to provide it. We really were trying to be responsive to our patients and their needs.” But is offering cosmetic injectables at places like Planned Parenthood addressing needs – or creating them?

“If you don’t know that you should be getting tested between each new partner [or] every three months, if you don’t know what your birth control options are, you’re already in a space where somebody has the answers to those questions.”

According to critics, the decision to include injectables at Planned Parenthood risks watering down our understanding of “essential” sexual healthcare services. If cosmetic options in sexual health clinics become the norm, sex educator Tara Jones says, the worry is that “we’re just telling people generally who are assigned female at birth that they need to constantly be investing in their physical appearance.” The growing fear around the blurred lines between cosmetics and sexual health is valid, but it’s worth noting that injectables, like those now offered at Planned Parenthood, have many uses, including gender affirming care and migraine suppression. 

By marketing botox at $9 per unit – considerably lower than the standard $10-$15 per unit range at local med spas – Planned Parenthood has two goals: to encourage harm reduction and to fund its clinic abilities. “Regardless of your personal opinions on things like injectables, these are people who are going to be qualified to do that work, who are going to be able to do it at a lower price point than a lot of these med spas,” says Jones. And with 85 per cent of their patients using Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program, this new endeavour may be able to create more access to trusted injectable services for some current patients; that said, the financial success of this service expansion will likely fall on its ability to bring in new clientele.  

Planned Parenthood’s expansion of services mirrors the growing connection between the sexual health and beauty spaces. And, although it’s too early to definitively say whether or not this service expansion could function as a roadmap for other US organisations at risk of similar funding cuts, it’s possible it could be a lifeline to deliver crucial health services like abortion and gender affirming care, while also evolving alongside patient needs. As sexual and reproductive healthcare continues to face relentless attacks from the US government, depending on profits from the cosmetic industry could create a new norm in the way we conceptualise sexual healthcare. 

One positive that could come out of this industry crossover may be the destigmatisation of sexual healthcare at large, especially if Planned Parenthood is able to broaden its clientele through its new aesthetic care options. “I feel like the barrier for a lot of people is [that] it’s inconvenient,” Jones says about Planned Parenthood services like STI testing.  “If you don’t know that you should be getting tested between each new partner [or] every three months, or if you don't know what your birth control options are, then you’re already in a space where somebody has the answers to those questions.” 

“Ultimately, if we are doing the same thing that we do with the fashion industry as we do with the beauty industry when it comes to sexual health, we’re sharing messages around products that people don’t need, and bodies that they don’t need to have, when their bodies are great the way they are.”

As cultural conversations around wellness have begun to embrace sexual health as a key player in overall wellbeing, the market is increasingly ripe with the newest sextech and intimate hygiene add-ons (the sexual wellness market is projected to reach 68.59 billion by 2035). While the merging began with the rebranding of sex toys as self-care, the growth of the sexual wellness category, and the stocking of vibrators and lubricants in the beauty aisles of pharmacies, now it’s evolved to encompass weakments and injectables. Vaginal tightening serums and even vaginal fillers are no longer considered novelties. There are at-home LED devices for “vaginal rejuvenation”; polynucleotide and hyaluronic acid injections for the vulva, and radio-frequency treatments that heat the internal and external vaginal tissue to stimulate collagen. As the aesthetic-slash-sexual health industry continues to boom, so do opportunities to capitalise on people’s insecurities around their bodies, which makes for a complicated future for sexual wellness.

According to Jones, the merging of sexual wellness with beauty trends makes it clear that the goalpost is always changing. “Ultimately, if we are doing the same thing that we do with the fashion industry as we do with the beauty industry when it comes to sexual health, we’re sharing messages around products that people don’t need, and around bodies that they don’t need to have, when their bodies are great the way they are,” sex educator Danielle Bezalel tells Dazed. Interest in labiaplasties, for example, has skyrocketed in the past decade alongside a sharp increase in genital insecurity. 

Each person has the right to change their body as they see fit, but it’s worth investigating the forces pushing aesthetics as the new face of sexual health. It may be an unfortunate reality, but clinics like Planned Parenthood shouldn’t have to offer cosmetic tweakments to stay afloat. The government’s regressive approach to sexual health has granted the beauty industry an opportunity to turn a profit; if funding is diminished, it will only sink its claws in deeper.