https://blackgirlnerds.com/black-women-at-the-intersection-of-reproductive-rights-and-climate-justice/

Since 2021, the United States has experienced its worst years for maternal mortality. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021 saw a 40 percent increase in maternal mortality from the previous year.

These deaths occurred during pregnancy or up to 42 days after and “occurred from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management.” While the rate was 26.6 deaths per 100,000 live births for white birthing people, in the Black community, the rate was nearly 70 deaths per 100,000 live births. Black birthing people are 2.6 times more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or in the weeks following labor than our white counterparts.

As we talk about reproductive justice, it is also important to talk about climate justice and how they are very much linked together. Climate justice is a framework that intersects the social, political, and ethical questions of how its benefits and burdens are differentially distributed. For example, socially marginalized groups experience the brunt of climate impacts while having limited to very little contribution in producing policies.

In Pittsburgh, people are breathing air that is filled with toxic matter, according to the American Lung Association. It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that in 2019, Pittsburgh was determined to be the worst place for Black women and birthing people to live.

Under-regulated chemicals such as vinyl chloride, the chemical spilled in the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment earlier this year, harm both the fetus and the pregnant person. Research has also linked hotter temperatures and wildfires due to climate change to higher rates of premature and low birth weight babies.

Most researchers agree that the effects of climate degradation and pollution on maternal and infant health have heavier consequences for Black people. They’ve also found the effect of extreme heat on preterm birth in Texas, California, Massachusetts, and Alabama are greater for Black people than their white counterparts.

In September 2023, the city of New Orleans and some surrounding parishes in south Louisiana began to prepare for three months of saltwater intrusion in the local water supply. In the meantime, current Louisiana Attorney General and Louisiana governor-elect Jeff Landry can be held partially responsible for the city’s ability to address the now sidestepped crisis, as well as the decayed state of the city’s entire water infrastructure.

Landry personally solicited the Louisiana State Bond Commission last year to withhold millions in funding from the New Orleans Sewage and Water Board due to the city government’s refusal to arrest and prosecute women in the wake of Louisiana’s total ban on abortion. The New Orleans Sewage and Water Board remains in desperate need of funding to take care of necessary repairs to its four water intake structures — one of which that has been inoperable for over 30 years.

Pregnant people in low-income neighborhoods in US cities, often where Black people live, do not face just one environmental health problem but often several, including air pollution, water pollution, lack of access to fresh produce, unlivable urban heat islands, and much more.

If we are going to be concerned about reproductive and maternal health, we have to pay attention to the climate crisis and other environmental disasters. On the other side of the mirror, people concerned about our planet’s environment need to pay more attention to the increases in maternal and infant mortality.

At the intersection of sexism and racism, we will find Black women facing a unique set of health outcomes under climate change. State-sponsored racist and sexist violence against Black girls and women in the United States has informed health outcomes throughout history. The truth is that gendered racism influences chronic health outcomes and climate change exacerbates them. Our bodies have the ability to adapt to minor and even repetitive injuries. But then there are those chronic stressors that take their toll, including housing insecurity, food and water insecurity, racialized gendered trauma, sexual violence, poverty, and more.

Black women have always been caretakers, whether we’ve wanted to be or not. The stereotypes that were created during slavery to justify the exploitation of Black women has continued to reinforce the idea of Black women as martyrs, jeopardizing their own health for the comfort of others. As it exists today, this stereotype could directly result in higher rates of infectious diseases among Black women under climate change.

The Biden-Harris administration has been somewhat outspoken on reproductive rights and has pledged to take climate action. But they have yet to connect the dots between the environmental justice and the reproductive justice crisis in the United States, even as they work to tackle both separately.

It is Congress that has to make sure the health needs and the right to a healthy environment are protected for people who are pregnant. It should be a simple thing; a natural thing. The Environmental Protection Agency needs to include reproductive justice organizations at every level fighting for pregnancy health on behalf of at-risk mothers.

Obstetrician/gynecologists also have a unique opportunity to raise awareness, educate, and advocate for mitigation strategies to reverse climate change affecting their patients and their families. I wonder how many of them do.

The Biden-Harris administration would also do well to establish some type of task force that works with the maternal and newborn health community, combining environmental advances with maternal and infant health. If it fails to do so, the maternal crisis in the United States will only continue to get worse.