The climate crisis is a reproductive justice crisis: How do you protect your health and your children in an increasingly dangerous and toxic environment? How do you decide whether or not to have a baby when a healthy and stable future is increasingly jeopardized? Even with access to fertility regulation, no one makes reproductive ‘choices’ freely in the face of so many economic and environmental pressures.  

Some of us look to the future and can’t imagine bringing children into such a hot, troubled world. For some of us, exposure to the fossil fuel industry has already jeopardized our health, or the health of our children. Parenthood has galvanized many of us towards greater action. For most of us, the threats to our reproductive freedom have been radicalizing. The climate impacts we see are unfolding during a time of increasing restrictions on reproductive self-determination and access to healthcare.


Climate action is often framed as ‘for the children’ or ‘for the next generation.’  For us, unlike for many of our leaders, ‘future generations’ is a practical matter: It is impossible for us to become parents without considering what kind of world our children will face. Our leaders have repeatedly favored big fossil fuel business over a habitable future for our next generation. The climate crisis is encroaching on any conceivable future, and amplifying the injustices that already threaten many lives.



Climate change has been an internationally recognized threat for over thirty years. In that time, lawmakers have broken trust with us again and again by subsidizing the fossil fuel industry with tens of billions of dollars a year. Without government support, we can’t shelter our children from another Katrina or another Harvey, a California wildfire or Washington mudslide, and we can’t feed them when drought destroys our food supply. We need government support to keep carcinogenic fracking chemicals out of our water table, and to combat the spread of Zika. 


Our elected officials must stop giving away our tax dollars to the industry that is killing us, and must stop attacking our reproductive sovereignty and access to affordable care. We fight for a resilient, safe, and just society, and we call on our leaders to support this vision.

We demand the right to make reproductive decisions free from massive, avoidable, government-supported harm.

We demand that the US end fossil fuel subsidies as an act of commitment toward our generation and those that follow.

We offer these testimonies as an act of conscience for our nation’s future.