CG spoke with self-identified climate refugee Margaret Reynolds about how a Maine coalition is working to save an L&D unit amid a rash of rural maternity care closures across the state and country — and amid extreme weather that can complicate travel to health centers farther and farther away.
Are mothers' lives at risk due to smoke exposure? Are pregnancy outcomes? Should IVF be delayed? Is sperm affected? CG spoke with Amy Padula, a professor at UC San Francisco and the Acting Director of the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment, about these and other potential impacts.
"Being a queer [or] trans activist and an environmental activist puts you in a greater sense of danger because both agendas are heavily under attack," Diego De Leon, Advocacy Chair at Out for Sustainability, told CG.
"While every family is different, mothers are disproportionately the default parent, meaning climate disruptions can add to the mental load, logistical challenges, and economic pressures many women already face," Laura Schifter, a Senior Fellow at the D.C.-based Aspen Institute, told CG.
"I think people think heart attacks, people think asthma. But they don't think about pregnant people," said Amy Padula, Acting Director of UCSF's Program on Reproductive Health & the Environment, about how pregnant people may be overlooked as one of the groups especially sensitive to wildfire smoke.
"Being a queer [or] trans activist and an environmental activist puts you in a greater sense of danger because both agendas are heavily under attack," Diego De Leon, Advocacy Chair at Out for Sustainability, told CG.
"While every family is different, mothers are disproportionately the default parent, meaning climate disruptions can add to the mental load, logistical challenges, and economic pressures many women already face," Laura Schifter, a Senior Fellow at the D.C.-based Aspen Institute, told CG.
"Incineration inevitably has an impact on the environment," Selma Benkhelifa of Progress Lawyers Network told CG about the U.S. government's previous plan to burn a cache of contraceptives instead of distributing them. "But the worst thing is depriving millions of women of access to contraception."
"This research project would not have happened had we not had buy-in and trust from the farmers we worked with," Emily Selland told CG about an effort in Senegal that showed integration of native fish into watery rice fields might curb schistosomiasis risks, which may be affected by climate shifts.
"Everywhere is blacked out," photographer Taiwo Aina-Adeokun told CG about the smoky, sooty conditions she observed in kitchen settings — spaces to which her identity as a female photojournalist helped gain her access, she said. "At the fish smoking area, her eyes were always watery."
"We know how to keep women and girls safe in outbreak situations," Lindsay Stark, Co-Director of the Center for Violence and Injury Prevention at Washington University, told CG. "We simply need the political buy-in and financial resources to ensure we do not repeat the mistakes of past responses."
"Pollution and climate shifts make the regular stressors more extreme and add new stressors," Jamie DeWitt, study co-author and Director of the Pacific Northwest Center for Translational Environmental Health Research at Oregon State University, told CG.
"There is nothing safe about forcing patients to drive through winter storms or snowy mountain passes to pick up a pill that's just as safe for them to get in the mail and that, either way, they'll take at home," Jenna Hudson, Senior Counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told CG.
