Skip to content Skip to search

Republish This Story

* Please read before republishing *

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Creative Commons license as long as you follow our republishing guidelines, which require that you credit The 19th and retain our pixel. See our full guidelines for more information.

To republish, simply copy the HTML at right, which includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to The 19th. Have questions? Please email [email protected].

— The Editors

Loading...

Modal Gallery

/

Menu

  • Our Mission
  • Our Team
  • Latest Stories
  • Search
  • Upcoming Events
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletter
  • Donate
  • Work With Us
  • Fellowships
    • From the Collection

      Changing Child Care

      Illustration of a woman feeding a baby a bottle
      • The full PUMP Act is now in effect. Here’s what it does for lactating parents.

        Chabeli Carrazana · April 28
      • 1 in 4 parents report being fired for work interruptions due to child care breakdowns

        Chabeli Carrazana · February 2
      • Washington, D.C., offers financial relief to local child care workers

        Orion Rummler · September 20
    • From the Collection

      Next-Gen GOP

      Illustration of a woman riding an elephant
      • Mayra Flores’ victory set a record for women in Congress. It also reflects the growing visibility of Republican Latinas

        Candice Norwood · June 21
      • A banner year for Republican women

        Amanda Becker · November 11
      • Republican women could double representation in the U.S. House

        Amanda Becker · November 4
    • From the Collection

      On The Rise

      Illustration of three women marching
      • This Delaware candidate could be the first transgender member of Congress

        Orion Rummler · June 26
      • Can Cheri Beasley build a winning coalition in North Carolina?

        Candice Norwood · October 11
      • Los Angeles has never elected a woman mayor. Karen Bass hopes to change that.

        Nadra Nittle · September 8
    • From the Collection

      Pandemic Within a Pandemic

      Illustration of four people marching for Black Lives Matter with coronavirus as the backdrop
      • Some LGBTQ+ people worry that the COVID-19 vaccine will affect HIV medication. It won’t.

        Orion Rummler · November 23
      • Why are more men dying from COVID? It’s a complicated story of nature vs. nurture, researchers say

        Mariel Padilla · September 22
      • Few incarcerated women were released during COVID. The ones who remain have struggled.

        Candice Norwood · August 17
    • From the Collection

      Portraits of a Pandemic

      Illustration of a woman wearing a mask and holding up the coronavirus
      • For family caregivers, COVID is a mental health crisis in the making

        Shefali Luthra · October 8
      • A new database tracks COVID-19’s effects on sex and gender

        Shefali Luthra · September 15
      • Pregnant in a pandemic: The 'perfect storm for a crisis'

        Shefali Luthra · August 25
    • From the Collection

      The 19th Explains

      People walking from many articles to one article where they can get the context they need on an issue.
      • The 19th Explains: What are 'late-term abortions' — and why are politicians talking about them? 

        Mel Leonor Barclay, Shefali Luthra · August 21
      • The 19th Explains: Why child marriage is still legal in 80% of U.S. states

        Mariel Padilla · July 5
      • The 19th Explains: The Supreme Court’s decision in the LGBTQ+ 303 Creative case

        Kate Sosin · June 30
    • From the Collection

      The Electability Myth

      Illustration of three women speaking at podiums
      • Mayra Flores’ victory set a record for women in Congress. It also reflects the growing visibility of Republican Latinas

        Candice Norwood · June 21
      • Stepping in after tragedy: How political wives became widow lawmakers

        Mariel Padilla · May 24
      • Do term limits help women candidates? New York could be a new testing ground

        Barbara Rodriguez · January 11
    • From the Collection

      The Impact of Aging

      A number of older people walking down a path of information.
      • From ballroom dancing to bloodshed, the older AAPI community grapples with gun control

        Nadra Nittle, Mariel Padilla · January 27
      • 'I'm planning on working until the day I die': Older women voters are worried about the future

        Mariel Padilla · June 3
      • Climate change is forcing care workers to act as first responders

        Jessica Kutz · May 31
    • From the Collection

      The State of Our Nation

      • States passing abortion bans reflect what only a small minority of their constituents actually want

        Jasmine Mithani · October 24
    • From the Collection

      Voting Rights

      A series of hands reaching for ballots.
      • Voting organizers are breathing ‘a deep sigh of relief’ over Supreme Court rulings on elections — for now

        Barbara Rodriguez · July 6
      • Ranked-choice voting is gaining momentum. So are efforts to stop it.

        Barbara Rodriguez · April 24
      • Connecticut voters approved early voting. Here’s how their new secretary of state wants to make it happen.

        Barbara Rodriguez · February 13

    View all collections

  • Explore by Topic

    • 19th Polling
    • Abortion
    • Business & Economy
    • Caregiving
    • Coronavirus
    • Education
    • Election 2020
    • Election 2022
    • Election 2024
    • Environment & Climate
    • Health
    • Immigration
    • Inside The 19th
    • Justice
    • LGBTQ+
    • Military
    • Politics
    • Press Release
    • Race
    • Sports
    • Technology

    View All Topics

Home
  • Our Mission
  • Our Team
  • Latest Stories
  • Search
  • Upcoming Events
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletter
  • Donate
  • Work With Us
  • Fellowships

We’re an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy. Read our story.

The 19th News(letter)

News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday.

You have been subscribed!

Please complete the following CAPTCHA to be confirmed. If you have any difficulty, contact [email protected] for help.

Submitting...

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please email [email protected] to subscribe.

Become a member

The 19th thanks our sponsors. Become one.

A pregnant woman in Puerto Rico picks up cleaning supplies after Hurricane Maria
Reproductive justice groups want the EPA to dedicate further resources to help pregnant people, especially those affected by pollution and climate change. Carlos Giusti/AP

Environment & Climate

Environmental advocates are asking the EPA to take a stand on reproductive justice

Activists want the agency's new office for environmental justice to make the health of pregnant people, which is threatened by a changing climate and pollutants, an explicit priority.

Jessica Kutz

Gender, climate and sustainability reporter

Published

2023-06-02 12:44
12:44
June 2, 2023
pm

Share

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email

Waning abortion access has dominated conversations around reproductive justice, but a lesser known principle of the movement to maintain bodily and reproductive autonomy is being threatened by a changing climate and a slew of environmental contaminants.

One of the main tenets of reproductive justice is the ability to raise a child in a safe and healthy environment, according to SisterSong, one of the leading reproductive justice collectives in the country. But the evidence that pollutants are impacting the health of pregnant people is everywhere.

Lead exposure is resulting in lower fertility rates and a higher risk of stillbirth. Fracking is connected to higher rates of preterm birth and congenital heart defects in newborns. Chemicals like PFAS, commonly found in drinking water, can decrease fertility and have been linked to higher blood pressure in pregnant people. And, because pregnant people drink more water than the average person, they face higher exposures to many of these toxins.  

The 19th thanks our sponsors. Become one.

A growing body of research has also linked climate change to adverse health impacts for pregnant people, with both wildfire smoke and extreme heat leading to a rise in poor pregnancy outcomes, including a rise in stillbirths, preterm births and babies with low birth weights. 

And like most environmental health disparities, low-income communities of color are the most impacted due both to where they live — in more polluted and hotter parts of cities — and difficulty paying for costly, but sometimes lifesaving, technologies like air conditioning. 

Increasingly, environmental justice organizations and reproductive justice advocates are looking for ways to work together to raise the profile of their interconnected fights. Now, they want the government to follow suit. 

  • More from The 19th
    A woman pushing a stroller is seen near the Bay Bridge as a dark orange sky hands over downtown San Francisco.
  • Pregnant people are at ‘greater risk’ in states hit hard by wildfire smoke, air pollution, new report shows
  • How can we shield children from the impacts of climate change? Investments in schools can help.
  • ‘You need water for everything’: Pregnant people and parents struggle to find safe water in Jackson

In November, Human Rights Watch (HRW), an international nongovernmental organization, sent an open letter to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) signed by 28 organizations. They asked the agency, which is tasked with protecting human health and the environment, to be more intentional in its work on reproductive justice.

The letter came after the EPA announced in September it was establishing the Office of Environmental Justice and Civil Rights, said Skye Wheeler, emergencies researcher for the Women’s Rights Division of HRW. 

“We just felt that this was also an amazing opportunity to weave in reproductive justice, or make sure that the reproductive justice framework is being used as they seek to reach their environmental justice obligations,” Wheeler said.

The letter asked the EPA to create a position at the office dedicated to reproductive justice, and that the agency direct resources to organizations working at the intersection of reproductive and environmental justice, including public health departments. It also asks for resources to go to birth workers like doulas, who play an important educational role in teaching clients how to limit their exposure to toxins and protect themselves from climate challenges like wildfire smoke and extreme heat. 

In March, the EPA wrote a response to the letter, reiterating its commitments to environmental justice and pointing out ways in which it is working with other agencies, including the Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, to educate health care providers like obstetricians around exposures to PFAS and lead. It is also trying to better understand how pollutant levels may impact children’s health or the health of a pregnancy through tools like the America’s Children and the Environment initiative, which compiles health indicators of infants and pregnant or breastfeeding people.  

Still, Wheeler, and other advocates feel that the agency could benefit by making reproductive justice a more explicit priority. 

“They are still missing a piece, which is that in those communities pregnant individuals are facing a whole host of difficulties and their particular rights are not being addressed right now,” she said. “They are not being seen and not being made visible in a way that would make their approach much more holistic and meaningful and much more effective.”

Making a commitment to reproductive justice at the newly formed office, and dedicating a person to helm it, would not only lead to better coordination at the government level, Wheeler argues, but also could better direct funding to work already happening on the ground when for example, lead contaminates a water supply and environmental justice groups rush in to provide safe water to pregnant people or those with small children. 

LaTricea Adams the cofounder of Black Millenials 4 Flint, an organization that does work on lead exposure around the country, said working on the environmental aspect of reproductive justice at the grassroots is key to addressing one of the administration’s other priorities — the Black maternal health crisis. Adams, who signed the letter, also sits on the White House Environmental Justice Advocacy Council. 

“We appreciate that there has been a larger body of research that is specific to Black women. We need that,” she said. “But we also need investment in the actual services to preserve and protect the lives of Black mothers and Black babies.” 

Federal grants usually require a laborious grant application process. Grassroots organizations often don’t have the resources to compete for federal money, but they are usually doing the most immediate work, deploying to evacuation centers during hurricanes to provide supplies to people who are breastfeeding, for example, or educating people about climate risks and environmental exposures during and after their pregnancy.  

To get that investment to where it is needed the most requires a “complete overhaul in the way funding models are set up,” Adams said. “With federal funding, we already know trying to get better funding and grants is hell on earth, and not really accessible to your community-based organizations that provide direct services.” Adams continued: “Local birthing centers, or people that work with a collaborative of doulas and midwives, and other ancestral birth workers, they’re severely underfunded.”

The Biden administration has committed to growing the doula workforce in the United States, with the Department of Health and Human Services announcing over $4 million to support community-based doulas last April. But advocates say much more is needed, and opening up more funding from the EPA’s office for environmental justice could help meet vulnerable pregnant people where they are. 

Rep. Lauren Underwood, an Illinois Democrat, recently reintroduced the Protecting Moms and Babies Against Climate Change Act, part of a package of bills referred to as the Momnibus, which would do just that. The legislation would create a federal grant program that would invest in community-based efforts to mitigate climate impacts on pregnant people. 

“The evidence is clear: extreme heat, air pollution, and other effects of climate change are endangering moms and babies, and we need to take action,” Underwood said in a news release. 

In the meantime, organizations like Adams’ are doing intersectional work, like running the Lead Free Mamas program, which trains doulas and other birth workers in effective ways to support and educate birthing people who have either been exposed to lead prior, during or after a pregnancy.

And recently, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, another organization, hired Micaela Martinez as its director of environmental health. Martinez, who has a background in infant and maternal health, is currently working on a campaign that aims to remove toxic chemicals from beauty products that have also been linked with reproductive health issues. 

The intersections between environmental and reproductive justice are numerous, she says. But for too long these movements have been seen as separate. “These areas have been very siloed not only scientifically, but then even within the justice space itself,” she said. 

Environmental and reproductive justice organizations say they need support more than ever to better address this intersectional issue, but both movements are facing other existential issues as well as limited funding resources. 

According to an analysis completed by The New School, a little over 1 percent of the $1.34 billion  distributed by national environmental grant makers between 2016 and 2017 was awarded to environmental justice organizations. The disparity was also gendered, with between 70 to 80 percent of funding going to organizations run by men. 

The newsletter for the new electorate, delivered to your inbox every other week

You have been subscribed!

Please complete the following CAPTCHA to be confirmed. If you have any difficulty, contact [email protected] for help.

Submitting…

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please email [email protected] to subscribe.

“Those of us who are advocates for sexual and reproductive health and rights organizations and reproductive justice organizations are all in one way or another fighting on many fronts in the U.S.,” Wheeler said. “We just had abortion rights, that rug pulled from under us in a very violent way. The maternal health crisis is terrifyingly worsening. But the fact of the matter is, we can’t ignore just the scale of the climate crisis.”

Environmental justice organizations are also fighting for a clean energy transition and against huge industry actors like oil and gas and chemical companies in places like Cancer Alley, a stretch of land on the Mississippi river in Louisiana that has more than 200 petrochemical plants and refineries. 

Those organizations on the Gulf Coast “are operating in crisis,” Adams said. “It’s not that they don’t care. It’s literally capacity.” 

But building out support at the EPA so that environmental organizations can better take on the necessary work to reach pregnant people could help. For Adams, the role of the EPA in the fight for reproductive justice is simple: “If the womb, the first environment, is not protected, what is life?”

Share

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email

The 19th News(letter)

News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday.

You have been subscribed!

Please complete the following CAPTCHA to be confirmed. If you have any difficulty, contact [email protected] for help.

Submitting...

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please email [email protected] to subscribe.

Become a member

Up Next

Members of Black in Repro including includes doulas, midwives, public health professionals, medical practitioners and other Black women advocates pose for a group picture.

Abortion

In Florida, these Black women see the fight for abortion access as part of a greater struggle for their safety

Advocacy coalition Black in Repro is training women to lobby legislators, educate their communities and build alliances.

Read the Story

The 19th
The 19th is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. Our stories are free to republish in accordance with these guidelines.

  • Donate
  • Newsletter
  • Events
  • Search
  • Jobs
  • Fellowships
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
  • Community Guidelines
  • Membership
  • Membership FAQ
  • Ways to Give
  • Sponsorship
  • Privacy
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram