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reproductive justice
Hands Off Our Bodies, Hands Off Our Future
I’m a climate justice organizer. Here's why I’m fighting for reproductive justice.
May 24, 2026
Earlier this year, in a horrific conversation with white supremacist podcaster Joe Rogan, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who started Facebook to rank women’s appearances in 2004, argued that the tech world needs more masculine energy.
Any serious look at the tech world and it’s clear it’s a space already overrun by the male ultra-wealthy class: 88.92% of IT CEOs alone are white men. This is the same cultural demographic and argument now overtaking our governmental systems as well. It’s an arrogance that demands control of all, from the bodies of women, trans folks, queer folks, and young people, to violent control of our environment, the plants, animals, landscapes, and non-human bodies that provide the world’s strength.
Days after serial-sexual-assaulter and white supremacist Donald Trump won the 2024 US presidential election, neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes tweeted, “Your body; my choice.” At his inauguration, Trump proclaimed (insert characteristic Trump voice), “We’re going to drill, baby, drill.”
These two statements are deeply related, echoing the same narratives of control, extraction, exploitation, and domination over our bodies, relatives, and communities.
Our movements must understand the intuitive reality that the attacks on reproductive rights, on reproductive access, and on our bodily autonomy are the same attacks as those on our environment.
All of this is why I found myself outside the Philadelphia Women’s Center near my college on February 8. With dozens of local community members from the grassroots organization Abortion Rights Philadelphia, we chanted, “Abortion is a human right, not just for the rich and white.” Together, we sang Chappell Roan and Beyoncé, building a wall of joy between the clinic’s patients and the masses of anti-abortion protesters, by and large older white men, who had gathered with dramatized pictures of fetuses, attempting to dox and scare patients from accessing their healthcare.
Attacks on the Environment are Attacks on Reproductive Rights
Our movements must understand the intuitive reality that the attacks on reproductive rights, on reproductive access, and on our bodily autonomy are the same attacks as those on our environment. And we must understand the inverse as well.
As New York City-based Afro-Puerto Rican reproductive and climate justice activist Hennessy García points out, “Where we see environmental injustice, we see reproductive injustice as well.” They go hand in hand.
For example, breathing in polluted air increases the likelihood for pregnant people to give birth prematurely. The same is true for exposure to water pollution, toxins from superfund sites and brownfields, proximity to fossil fuel infrastructure, and the effects of extreme heat. All of these environmental hazards are, by and large, located in communities of color, especially low-income communities, across the country. This means that when Trump chants, “Drill, baby, drill” and loosens our already weak environmental protections, he’s putting pregnant people of color at risk of both climate and environmental injustices and harms.
This is also the case for women and transgender or non-binary (TGNB), intersex, and LGBTQIA+ people, independent of pregnancy, and for disabled people as well, due to societal structure, gendered roles, discrimination, and resource inequity. It is also true that sexual violence rates for women and TGNB folks increase significantly in the aftermath of climate disasters.
The clear takeaway here: Women and TGNB people’s lives and sexual and reproductive health are being threatened by Trump, fossil fuel companies, and their Democratic allies, worsening climate and environmental crises.
The Goal is Domination
This is all intentional. While Trump bars the words “environmental justice,” “gender,” “female,” “women,” and “pregnancy” from federal agencies and refers to Gaza and Palestine as “demolition site[s],” he also pushes a proposal of a $5,000 cash “baby bonus” to every American mother after delivery. The Trump administration wants women, on one hand, to reproduce endlessly, and on the other hand, it condemns women in Black and brown communities to death, displacement, and genocide. Whether those be Black and brown communities overburdened by fossil fuels and extractive infrastructure, by police brutality and deportation, or whether they be like in Gaza, by incessant deadly bombardment.
Look at Elon Musk and his 14 children with four different younger women. In November, he tweeted, “Instead of teaching fear of pregnancy, we should teach fear of childlessness.” As Arwa Mahdawi of The Guardian argues, “It’s easy for Musk, who will never have to carry any of the children he’s so keen on having, to be blasé about pregnancy risks: He can outsource them all,” pointing to one of his partners, Grimes, who almost died during the pregnancy of their son X Æ A-12.
As Garcia says, “People with the ability to get pregnant are not machines.” But that’s exactly what the Trump-Musk administration wants.
It’s all, ultimately, about building logics for masculine control across every area of our lives, bodies, and world.
They want those who fit into their racialized view of “America” to reproduce endlessly, and they want those who don’t to be oppressed, to work as capital creators, and to, in many cases, die.
There’s a deep, contradictory nature to this logic. On one hand, Trump is trying to stop people of color from accessing abortion or contraceptive care, and on the other, he is trying to literally facilitate their deaths. And for white women, he’s encouraging them to give birth as much as possible, yet still not offering childcare or maternal care—instead, he scrubs the word “pregnancy” from the Department of Health and Human Services. He’s offering $5,000 to women who give birth—a measly sum compared to the $237,482 it takes to raise a child in the US—and simultaneously plans to limit childcare and eliminate Head Start. Ultimately, it’s not just about eugenic-reminiscent reproductive policy; it’s about control. It’s about strategic destabilization, whether it’s control of land—from Black, brown, and Indigenous communities to Gaza, Panama, and Greenland—or control of bodies and reproductive, life-making capacities, from Nick Fuentes’ “Your body; my choice” to the aforementioned actions of the administration. It’s also about exploitation, whether it’s mass deportations or labor exploitation, like the forms of slavery and exploitation for incarcerated individuals appearing across the country, from Louisiana to California.
Layer in the climate crisis and mass inaffordability, and this image of control becomes an even more frightening picture.
These same narratives of masculine control are what propel anti-climate, pro-fossil fuel policy in this current administration. Trump’s stated goal with his Department of Energy, now led by fracking CEO Chris Wright, is to “unleash [a] aolden era of American energy dominance.” He’s also created the National Energy Dominance Council to bolster fossil fuel exploitation of our climate, of indigenous lands, and of communities of color. The through line is that these men are trying to dominate.
We see this also in popular narratives against climate action. Professional misogynist and sex trafficker Andrew Tate wrote in a now-infamous Twitter exchange, ultimately leading to his arrest, “@GretaThunberg, please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions,” attaching an image of his collection of over 33 sports cars.
Writing about the exchange, author Rebecca Solnit wrote: “There’s a direct association between machismo and the refusal to recognize and respond appropriately to the climate catastrophe. It’s a result of versions of masculinity in which selfishness and indifference—individualism taken to its extremes—are defining characteristics, and therefore caring and acting for the collective good is their antithesis.”
Flaunting dominance over people and nature is deemed manly, whilst care is deemed as unmanly. And, taking action with respect to justice, the environment, or our collective future—as epitomized by Greta Thunberg—is deemed as womanly.
It’s all, ultimately, about building logics for masculine control across every area of our lives, bodies, and world.
To Fight This, Our Movements Must Be Deeply Cross-Sectional
These dynamics don’t care for separations between environment and climate or climate and reproduction—it’s all a question of exploitation and increased power and domination for the white male ultra-wealthy few. To face this, our movements for justice, too, must be just as deeply intersectional.
The SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, a storied reproductive justice organization, defines “Reproductive Justice [as] the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities” (italics added).
There is no reproductive justice without ending fossil fuel expansion. There is no reproductive justice without a just, Indigenous, and worker-led societal transformation to renewable, community-controlled energy.
It means placing bodily autonomy at the center of our fight for climate justice, and breaking down the divides between our movements.
It’s time for us to incorporate reproductive justice just as deeply into our fight for climate justice. That means for us in the climate space to show up at our local abortion clinic to protect patients; it means connecting with and learning from local reproductive justice organizers in our area; and it means bringing in a reproductive justice platform into our climate policy. It doesn’t just mean supporting Planned Parenthood; it means listening to the Reproductive Justice movement and finding the local fights, whether legislative or practical, near you, and getting involved. It means funding local abortion funds that are always in need of donations, like those affiliated with the grassroots National Network of Abortion Funds.
It means placing bodily autonomy at the center of our fight for climate justice, and breaking down the divides between our movements. It means rejecting centrist politicians like New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who claim leadership on reproductive rights and climate justice, while vetoing legislation to protect those seeking reproductive and gender-affirming care and fast-tracking new fossil fuel pipelines.
There is no other way to face the capitalist fossil-fueled heteropatriarchical oligarchy that has now overtaken our government and seeks to dominate us all.
Climate justice is reproductive justice.
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A Public Health Emergency: How Abortion Bans Are Fueling Maternal Deaths in America
People living in states that have banned abortion are nearly twice as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after compared with those in states where abortion remains legal and accessible.
Apr 10, 2026
The maternal mortality crisis in the United States is a national embarrassment, and it’s unfolding in real time. The US continues to have one of the highest maternal death rates among high-income countries, and the situation is getting worse, not better. Behind this trend is a growing body of research showing that state abortion bans directly contribute to increased maternal mortality, especially in communities already burdened by systemic inequities.
Maternal mortality has traditionally reflected deep structural problems in a healthcare system that fails to serve all people equally. In 2024, the US maternal mortality rate ticked upward again, reversing a brief decline and demonstrating that the crisis is far from over. Experts point to a range of causes, including reduced access to prenatal care, maternity care deserts, and strained hospital systems, all problems intensified in states with abortion restrictions and in states with increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
A comprehensive analysis from the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) mortality figures shows that people living in states that have banned abortion are nearly twice as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after compared with those in states where abortion remains legal and accessible. What’s more, in supportive states where abortion has remained legal, maternal mortality has declined by about 21% since 2022, suggesting that access to comprehensive reproductive care saves lives.
Restricting abortion does more than eliminate a medical procedure; it forces people to carry pregnancies that pose very real health risks. Childbirth has inherent dangers from hemorrhage and infection to hypertensive disorders and cardiac events, and the risk of death from pregnancy is at least 44 times higher than from abortion. When abortion is inaccessible, people are compelled to continue unwanted or medically unsafe pregnancies. That dynamic alone drives increased deaths that could otherwise have been prevented.
Bans do not reduce the prevalence of abortion; they reduce its safety, push people into riskier medical scenarios, and leave pregnant people with fewer options even when their health is at stake.
Racial and socioeconomic disparities in maternal mortality did not begin with the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Black birthing people in the US have long faced significantly higher death rates than white birthing people, a symptom of deep structural racism in healthcare, poverty, and chronic stress. But abortion bans have exacerbated these inequities.
In states with abortion bans, Black birthing people are more than three times as likely as white birthing people in those same states to die from pregnancy-related causes. Those figures make crystal clear that when we talk about maternal mortality, we are talking about a crisis of racial inequity, class inequity, and political neglect. States with the worst maternal health outcomes, including Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, are predominantly in the South and have enacted some of the most restrictive reproductive laws.
These disparities compound with other conditions such as limited access to early prenatal care—which the CDC reports has declined across the country, with the steepest drops among Black mothers. Delays in early care are associated with worse outcomes for both mother and baby and are worsened by the closure of maternity care facilities in rural and under-resourced areas.
For undocumented and immigrant communities, the maternal mortality crisis is layered with additional barriers. Fear of immigration enforcement, including ICE, deters people from seeking care, even in emergencies. Clinics in border states with large immigrant populations were already medically underserved before Dobbs, and abortion bans have deepened that inaccessibility. Many undocumented people lack insurance, fear reporting, or face economic barriers that make traveling for care impossible. These structural obstacles do not just delay care, they can literally cost lives.
Immigrant and mixed-status families are disproportionately concentrated in states with abortion bans, like Texas, Arizona, and Florida, meaning that people who already face the greatest systemic barriers to healthcare are also the most likely to lack access to safe abortion or comprehensive maternal services. This intersection of racist policy, reproductive restriction, and anti-immigrant enforcement creates a perfect storm that pushes already vulnerable people further to the margins and deeper toward harm.
Critics of abortion argue from moral or ideological positions, but the evidence shows that access to abortion care is fundamentally a matter of public health. Bans do not reduce the prevalence of abortion; they reduce its safety, push people into riskier medical scenarios, and leave pregnant people with fewer options even when their health is at stake.
We are now witnessing a preventable loss of life, and the window to act is closing.
We know how to prevent many maternal deaths: Expand access to comprehensive reproductive care (including abortion), strengthen prenatal and postpartum support, increase Medicaid coverage, invest in maternity care infrastructure, and dismantle the historic and systemic inequities that predict who lives and who dies. We know these interventions work because states that have protected reproductive rights are already seeing declines in maternal mortality.
To ignore this crisis is to ignore evidence, dignity, and the lives of pregnant people, especially those in Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and economically disadvantaged communities.
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National Abortion Providers, Thank You!
On this National Abortion Provider Appreciation Day, during Women’s History Month, we reflect on what it truly means to lead change by honoring providers who stand courageous in clinics across the country.
Mar 10, 2026
Each March, as the world turns its gaze toward Women’s History Month, we are reminded of the countless women whose courage, intellect, resilience, and leadership have reshaped our world. For 2026, the national theme—“Leading the Change: Women Shaping a Sustainable Future”—honors the women who are reimagining and rebuilding systems to ensure long-term sustainability: environmental, economic, educational, and societal. It recognizes women’s leadership in creating a future rooted in equity, justice, and opportunity for all.
Within that narrative sits a group of women and gender-expansive people whose work rarely appears in history books but whose impact resonates through lives across the nation: abortion providers.
On March 10, National Abortion Provider Appreciation Day, we are called to honor these fearless caregivers who sit at the frontlines of reproductive healthcare. They embody the very essence of this year’s Women’s History Month theme of leading change and shaping a future where bodily autonomy, dignity, and compassionate care are not just ideals but realities.
Abortion providers deliver essential medical care in the face of extraordinary adversity. They confront threats, protests, harassment, legal warfare, and violence—all aimed at trying to silence them, intimidate them, or push them out of the work they know is crucial. They endure anti-clinic demonstrations, surveillance by extremists, and political rhetoric designed to vilify not just a medical procedure but the fundamental humanity of the people they serve. Despite this, they show up day after day with resolve and open hearts.
Just as the suffragists, civil rights leaders, and healthcare pioneers of earlier eras were architects of change, today’s abortion providers are reshaping what justice looks like in the 21st century.
Their courage is deeply personal. It is the exam room conversation where a provider listens without judgment. It is the moment they guide a patient through a complex decision with clarity and care. It is the steady hand on a shoulder trembling with fear and hope. This is leadership: not in some distant boardroom, but in shared humanity. This is sustainability: building systems of care that endure in the face of relentless attack.
At the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project (WRRAP), we fund patients and eliminate financial barriers. But it is abortion providers who make care happen. They are the ones with the medical training, the compassion, the resilience, and sometimes the very bodies standing between patients and an unsafe, uncertain future.
Our work at WRRAP could not exist without these providers at the forefront. They are our partners in every sense bridging policy and possibility, funding and freedom, fear and resilience. We provide financial support so a patient doesn’t have to choose between rent and care, but it is the provider who opens their door, who holds space for people, who offers healing and hope in a world that so often refuses it.
To the providers who dedicate their lives to this work: We see you, we thank you, and we honor you. You are shaping a sustainable future, one where people have autonomy over their bodies and futures; one where care is delivered with compassion, dignity, and respect; one where equity is more than a slogan but a lived practice.
The work of abortion providers is history making. Just as the suffragists, civil rights leaders, and healthcare pioneers of earlier eras were architects of change, today’s abortion providers are reshaping what justice looks like in the 21st century. They are environmental stewards of well-being, economic innovators in equitable care delivery, educators in dignity and consent, and societal leaders in advancing reproductive freedom for all.
Being a provider today means doing the work under threats that others can scarcely imagine. It means navigating legal labyrinths designed to block care, enduring hostile legislative sessions, and facing protests that seek to make the act of healing itself controversial. And yet, providers persist, not because it is easy, but because it is necessary.
On this National Abortion Provider Appreciation Day, during Women’s History Month, we reflect on what it truly means to lead change by honoring providers who stand courageous in clinics across the country, whose safety has been threatened because they chose care over fear, whose compassion has saved futures with every patient they serve.
To every abortion provider today: Thank you for leading. Thank you for caring. Thank you for building a future rooted in justice, compassion, and dignity.
We are grateful beyond words, and we stand with you. This is our collective power.
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