Climate Change’s Disproportionate Threat to Women’s Reproductive Health

Climate change amplifies risks that already burden women, from heightened exposure to gender-based violence to severe reproductive-health emergencies. In Sindh, Pakistan, catastrophic floods in 2022 left 73,000 pregnant women weeks from delivery without nearby clinics, out of a total of 650,000 pregnant women in the disaster zone. The same pattern recurred in the United States when Hurricane Helene struck North Carolina in 2024, shutting down the region’s sole abortion clinic and forcing high-risk, third-trimester patients to seek care out of state.

Ms. (Magazine)

Research cited in the article links climate stressors to concrete health outcomes. A University of Southern California study found that exposure to wildfire smoke and heat after the 2025 Los Angeles fires increased the likelihood of delivering an underweight infant, even when exposure occurred in the month before conception. Prolonged heat exposure is also associated with preterm birth, stillbirth, preeclampsia, and miscarriage, with risk nearly doubling for women in the most climate-vulnerable neighborhoods. In North Carolina, a “maternity care desert” serves 153,000 women of reproductive age, and the hurricane turned an already strained system into a catastrophe.

Ms. (Magazine)

Population Action International (PAI) has worked for six decades with civil-society partners in Malawi, Bangladesh, and Mexico to embed reproductive-health provisions in disaster-preparedness plans. PAI also lobbied the U.S. government to fund the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which delivers emergency reproductive-health kits within hours of a climate disaster. The article notes that the United States has now withdrawn funding from UNFPA and denied future allocations, simultaneously stepping back from key global climate commitments. These actions, the author argues, unravel hard-won progress at the intersection of climate resilience, health, and human rights.

Ms. (Magazine)

The commentary concludes that existing infrastructure and expertise can protect women, but political will and financing are lacking. It urges climate leaders, negotiators, and policymakers to embed gender-responsive measures in every disaster-response plan, adaptation strategy, and budget line. Without such integration, the climate crisis will continue to exact a disproportionate reproductive-health toll on women in Pakistan, East Africa, Latin America, and the United States.

Ms. (Magazine)