Environmental Advocates Push the EPA to Take a Stand on Reproductive Justice

Waning abortion entry has dominated conversations round reproductive justice, however a lesser recognized precept of the motion to keep up bodily and reproductive autonomy is being threatened by a altering local weather and a slew of environmental contaminants.

One of many essential tenets of reproductive justice is the flexibility to boost a toddler in a secure and wholesome setting, in accordance with SisterSong, one of many main reproductive justice collectives within the nation. However the proof that pollution are impacting the well being of pregnant individuals is in every single place.

Lead publicity is leading to decrease fertility charges and a higher risk of stillbirth. Fracking is linked to higher rates of preterm birth and congenital coronary heart defects in newborns. Chemical compounds like PFAS, generally present in ingesting water, can decrease fertility and have been linked to larger blood strain in pregnant individuals. And, as a result of pregnant individuals drink extra water than the common particular person, they face larger exposures to many of those toxins.

A rising physique of analysis has also linked climate change to hostile well being impacts for pregnant individuals, with each wildfire smoke and excessive warmth resulting in an increase in poor being pregnant outcomes, together with an increase in stillbirths, preterm births and infants with low beginning weights.

And like most environmental well being disparities, low-income communities of coloration are probably the most impacted due each to the place they stay — in additional polluted and warmer components of cities — and problem paying for pricey, however typically lifesaving, applied sciences like air con.

More and more, environmental justice organizations and reproductive justice advocates are searching for methods to work collectively to boost the profile of their interconnected fights. Now, they need the federal government to observe go well with.

In November, Human Rights Watch (HRW), a global nongovernmental group, despatched an open letter to the Environmental Safety Company (EPA) signed by 28 organizations. They requested the company, which is tasked with defending human well being and the setting, to be extra intentional in its work on reproductive justice.

The letter got here after the EPA introduced in September it was establishing the Office of Environmental Justice and Civil Rights, stated Skye Wheeler, emergencies researcher for the Ladies’s Rights Division of HRW.

“We simply felt that this was additionally a tremendous alternative to weave in reproductive justice, or ensure that the reproductive justice framework is getting used as they search to achieve their environmental justice obligations,” Wheeler stated.

The letter requested the EPA to create a place on the workplace devoted to reproductive justice, and that the company direct assets to organizations working on the intersection of reproductive and environmental justice, together with public well being departments. It additionally asks for assets to go to beginning staff like doulas, who play an necessary academic position in instructing purchasers tips on how to restrict their publicity to toxins and shield themselves from local weather challenges like wildfire smoke and excessive warmth.

In March, the EPA wrote a response to the letter, reiterating its commitments to environmental justice and stating methods through which it’s working with different businesses, together with the Poisonous Substances and Illness Registry, to coach well being care suppliers like obstetricians round exposures to PFAS and lead. It is usually attempting to raised perceive how pollutant ranges could affect youngsters’s well being or the well being of a being pregnant via instruments just like the America’s Children and the Environment initiative, which compiles well being indicators of infants and pregnant or breastfeeding individuals.

Nonetheless, Wheeler, and different advocates really feel that the company may gain advantage by making reproductive justice a extra express precedence.

“They’re nonetheless lacking a bit, which is that in these communities pregnant people are going through a complete host of difficulties and their specific rights are usually not being addressed proper now,” she stated. “They don’t seem to be being seen and never being made seen in a approach that may make their strategy rather more holistic and significant and rather more efficient.”

Making a dedication to reproductive justice on the newly fashioned workplace, and dedicating an individual to helm it, wouldn’t solely result in higher coordination on the authorities stage, Wheeler argues, but in addition might higher direct funding to work already occurring on the bottom when for instance, lead contaminates a water provide and environmental justice teams rush in to supply secure water to pregnant individuals or these with babies.

LaTricea Adams the cofounder of Black Millenials 4 Flint, a corporation that does work on lead publicity across the nation, stated engaged on the environmental side of reproductive justice on the grassroots is vital to addressing one of many administration’s different priorities — the Black maternal well being disaster. Adams, who signed the letter, additionally sits on the White Home Environmental Justice Advocacy Council.

“We recognize that there was a bigger physique of analysis that’s particular to Black girls. We’d like that,” she stated. “However we additionally want funding within the precise companies to protect and shield the lives of Black moms and Black infants.”

Federal grants normally require a laborious grant software course of. Grassroots organizations typically don’t have the assets to compete for federal cash, however they’re normally doing probably the most fast work, deploying to evacuation facilities throughout hurricanes to supply provides to people who find themselves breastfeeding, for instance, or educating individuals about local weather dangers and environmental exposures throughout and after their being pregnant.

To get that funding to the place it’s wanted probably the most requires a “full overhaul in the way in which funding fashions are arrange,” Adams stated. “With federal funding, we already know attempting to get higher funding and grants is hell on earth, and not likely accessible to your community-based organizations that present direct companies.” Adams continued: “Native birthing facilities, or those who work with a collaborative of doulas and midwives, and different ancestral beginning staff, they’re severely underfunded.”

The Biden administration has dedicated to rising the doula workforce in the US, with the Division of Well being and Human Companies saying over $4 million to help community-based doulas final April. However advocates say rather more is required, and opening up extra funding from the EPA’s workplace for environmental justice might assist meet weak pregnant individuals the place they’re.

Rep. Lauren Underwood, an Illinois Democrat, just lately reintroduced the Defending Mothers and Infants In opposition to Local weather Change Act, a part of a package of bills referred to as the Momnibus, which might do exactly that. The laws would create a federal grant program that may spend money on community-based efforts to mitigate local weather impacts on pregnant individuals.

“The proof is evident: excessive warmth, air air pollution, and different results of local weather change are endangering mothers and infants, and we have to take motion,” Underwood stated in a information launch.

Within the meantime, organizations like Adams’ are doing intersectional work, like working the Lead Free Mamas program, which trains doulas and different beginning staff in efficient methods to help and educate birthing individuals who have both been uncovered to steer prior, throughout or after a being pregnant.

And just lately, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, one other group, employed Micaela Martinez as its director of environmental well being. Martinez, who has a background in toddler and maternal well being, is presently engaged on a marketing campaign that goals to take away poisonous chemical substances from magnificence merchandise which have additionally been linked with reproductive well being points.

The intersections between environmental and reproductive justice are quite a few, she says. However for too lengthy these actions have been seen as separate. “These areas have been very siloed not solely scientifically, however then even inside just like the justice house itself,” she stated.

Environmental and reproductive justice organizations say they want help greater than ever to raised handle this intersectional problem, however each actions are going through different existential points in addition to restricted funding assets.

In accordance with an analysis completed by The New School, a little bit over 1 p.c of the $1.34 billion distributed by nationwide environmental grant makers between 2016 and 2017 was awarded to environmental justice organizations. The disparity was additionally gendered, with between 70 to 80 p.c of funding going to organizations run by males.

“These of us who’re advocates for sexual and reproductive well being and rights organizations and reproductive justice organizations are multi functional approach or one other combating on many fronts within the U.S.,” Wheeler stated. “We simply had abortion rights, that rug pulled from below us in a really violent approach. The maternal well being disaster is terrifyingly worsening. However the reality of the matter is, we are able to’t ignore simply the dimensions of the local weather disaster.”

Environmental justice organizations are additionally combating for a clear power transition and towards big business actors like oil and gasoline and chemical corporations in locations like Most cancers Alley, a stretch of land on the Mississippi river in Louisiana that has greater than 200 petrochemical vegetation and refineries.

These organizations on the Gulf Coast “are working in disaster,” Adams stated. “It’s not that they don’t care. It’s actually capability.”

However constructing out help on the EPA in order that environmental organizations can higher tackle the required work to achieve pregnant individuals might assist. For Adams, the position of the EPA within the battle for reproductive justice is easy: “If the womb, the primary setting, just isn’t protected, what’s life?”