Climate Change and Reproductive Rights Collide in Texas

On Saturday, Daniella Flanagan rallied for reproductive rights in downtown Houston along with more than 10,000 others when the skies opened. Relentless, heavy rain poured down.

As the winds picked up, she and a friend grabbed their blue hurricane tarp and trudged to their SUV in ankle-deep water. Stranded cars were strewn about.

“As we got farther through the city to get to the east side of downtown, there was more water and more water,” Flanagan said.

Texas is already known as Flash Flood Alley, but scientists say they expect heavy precipitation events like the one last weekend will become even more common as the planet heats up. Warmer air holds more water, so when rain finally falls, it is fast and concentrated — like a sponge being wrung.

Flanagan, who experienced Hurricane Harvey, Winter Storm Uri and a host of tropical storms in Houston, said that the city is failing to equitably respond to these emergencies, which tend to disproportionately affect women. During an environmental disaster, women can lose access to critical family planning services or prenatal care. Beyond a documented increase in physical, sexualized, and domestic violence in the aftermath of disasters, pregnant women have an increased risk of complications, like preeclampsia.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends that cities double down on access to reproductive care in light of the climate crisis. Instead, as rainstorms increase in frequency and severity, Texas policymakers are restricting this access, such as with the near-total abortion ban that took effect Sept. 1. On Wednesday, a U.S. judge blocked the enforcement of the law, but it is still unclear whether people seeking abortions can get them, and what the ultimate fate of the law will be. In the meantime, as this plays out in the courts, climate change and reproductive rights are on course for a disastrous collision — as has already happened in some parts of the world.

“We need to be increasing care,” said Cecilia Sorensen, the director of the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education at Columbia University. “Anything that’s going to decrease access to women’s health care, whether that be for abortions or prenatal care or anything, is going to not be a good thing in the setting of climate change.”

A racial and economic divide

Communities of color are disproportionately impacted by both climate change and a lack of access to medical care. Over 60 percent of Planned Parenthood patients in the Gulf Coast region are Black women of reproductive age, said Petrice Sams-Abiodun of the Louisiana Planned Parenthood. During Climate Week in September, she spoke on a panel that examined the intersection of climate, race, and reproductive justice.

Sams-Abiodun was particularly frustrated that the Texas abortion law came into force during Hurricane Ida at the end of September.

“I think that the opposition are intentionally doing some of these things when they know that these communities are vulnerable,” Sams-Abiodun said.

The paused Texas law mandates that people cannot have an abortion after six weeks. That’s just two weeks after someone with a consistent menstrual cycle misses their period. With storms like Ida, some communities, such as the Houma Nation in southern Louisiana, will still be recovering four weeks later. With little time for anything besides physically rebuilding their lives, paying close attention to one’s body can fall by the wayside.

Then there’s the difficulty of finding abortion services during a disaster. When there is an emergency, reproductive care often isn’t considered essential, Sams-Abiodun said. People who need abortions must travel to safer areas — a migration pattern seen during Houston’s most notorious storm, Hurricane Harvey.

Ophra Leyser-Whalen, a medical sociologist at the University of Texas at El Paso, found that during the hurricane, a local abortion fund received calls from people in Houston seeking a procedure.

“And that stood to out to us,” she said. “Like, are people calling El Paso from Houston?"

It's a 10-hour drive between the two cities.

A lack of infrastructure

All of the eight women who called the fund in the wake of Hurricane Harvey were displaced. Many of them did not have insurance, were unemployed, or didn’t have adequate personal resources to cover the costs of medical care, let alone the expense of a road trip.

“We don’t do anything to supply people who live in Texas with healthy, clean air; clean, good food; water; means to take care of themselves, and then we’ve slapped a law like this [the abortion law] on them,” said Lori Choi, whose organization, I’ll Have What She’s Having, organized Saturday’s rally in downtown Houston. “It is just a constant attack on minorities and socially and economically disadvantaged people.”

Choi and many others are pushing politicians and courts to understand the intersectionality of reproductive justice, racist policies, and climate change. Until they do, these decision-makers will not be able to create a path to a healthy future in Houston, or in the nation at large.