When Crisis Shapes the Womb: Why Climate Change and War Are Becoming Women’s Health Emergencies

This article was exclusively written for The European Sting by Ms. Sadia Khalid, a Scientist-Physician (MBBS, MD) at Tallinn University of Technologye. She is affiliated with the International Federation of Medical Students Associations (IFMSA), cordial partner of The Sting. The opinions expressed in this piece belong strictly to the writer and do not necessarily reflect IFMSA’s view on the topic, nor The European Sting’s one.

For too long, climate change and war have been discussed as separate global crises. One is framed as an environmental emergency, the other as a political and security failure. But for millions of women and girls, especially those who are pregnant or of reproductive age, these crises meet in the most intimate place possible: the body.

From rising heat and polluted air to forced displacement, destroyed hospitals, and reproductive coercion, both climate disruption and armed conflict are reshaping women’s health in ways that remain dangerously underappreciated. Maternal health, sexual and reproductive rights, and bodily autonomy are increasingly under pressure not only from failing systems, but also from the social and political forces that decide whose lives are protected and whose are treated as expendable.

The evidence is growing. Climate change is no longer a distant threat. It is already affecting pregnancy outcomes through extreme heat, air pollution, water scarcity, food insecurity, and natural disasters. Exposure to high temperatures during pregnancy has been linked to miscarriage, preterm birth, and stillbirth. Polluted air, especially fine particulate matter and black carbon, has been associated with low birth weight, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, and other complications. Contaminated water and industrial chemicals such as PFAS and phthalates pose further risks to fertility and fetal development.

These harms are not distributed equally. Women in low-income settings, rural regions, and communities with fragile healthcare systems bear the heaviest burden. A heatwave in a wealthy city may mean discomfort and dehydration. In a poorer region, it may mean crop failure, malnutrition, contaminated water, and the collapse of already limited maternity services. Climate change magnifies inequality, and pregnancy often magnifies vulnerability.

War does something similar, but through different mechanisms. Armed conflict destroys health infrastructure, interrupts family planning, increases sexual violence, and forces women into unsafe pregnancies and births. It contributes to maternal deaths not only through bombs and bullets, but through hunger, displacement, lack of clean water, and the loss of access to contraception, abortion care, and skilled birth attendants. These are not secondary issues. They are central to how women and girls live war.

Yet there is another truth global health research is only beginning to confront: women’s reproductive lives in war are not merely collateral damage. They are often directly controlled, manipulated, and politicised. In some conflicts, armed actors have restricted contraception, imposed forced marriage, compelled pregnancy, or enforced abortion. Women’s bodies become instruments of military strategy, ethnic control, or ideological rule. Reproduction itself is drawn into the battlefield.

Myanmar offers a stark example. Decades of ethnic conflict have shaped not only the country’s healthcare system but also women’s reproductive choices and access to care. In some areas, women are discouraged from using contraception in the name of preserving ethnic communities. In others, health services are so weakened by conflict and militarisation that maternal mortality remains high despite widespread awareness of family planning. The lesson is sobering; access alone does not explain reproductive outcomes. Power does. So do fear, coercion, and the politics of identity.

This is why women’s health in crisis cannot be understood through infrastructure alone. Hospitals matter. Supplies matter. Clean water, food, and trained healthcare staff matter immensely. But they do not tell the whole story. To understand why women continue to suffer disproportionately during climate emergencies and wars, we must also ask who controls resources, who controls movement, who controls reproduction, and whose suffering counts in policy decisions.

That question matters in wealthy countries too. High-income healthcare systems are not outside this conversation. They are part of the problem and part of the solution. The healthcare sector itself is responsible for roughly 4 to 5 per cent of global carbon emissions. Maternity care, especially when it relies heavily on disposable products, energy-intensive surgery, and high-emission anaesthetic gases, has a measurable environmental footprint. The UK’s National Health Service has shown that a different path is possible, through its net-zero strategy, low-carbon clinical reforms, and efforts to build sustainability into care delivery. Professional bodies such as the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists are increasingly treating climate change as a core women’s health issue rather than a side concern.

This shift is necessary. A woman-centred approach to healthcare in the twenty-first century must include climate resilience, emergency preparedness, and reproductive justice. It must ask how pregnant women can be protected during heatwaves, floods, wildfires, and displacement. It must ensure continuity of contraception, prenatal care, safe childbirth, and postnatal support during emergencies. And it must do so without placing the burden of “sustainability” onto women themselves. Greener healthcare should not mean more discomfort, less dignity, or fewer choices for patients.

Healthcare professionals have an especially important role to play. They are among the most trusted public voices and can act as educators, advocates, and institutional change-makers. They can help patients understand environmental risks, encourage safer and more sustainable practices, and press policymakers to strengthen air quality laws, disaster planning, maternal nutrition, and reproductive health services. They can also challenge the dangerous idea that women’s reproductive health is somehow peripheral during moments of crisis. It is not peripheral. It is foundational.

What is needed now is a broader moral and political recognition that maternal and reproductive health are not niche issues. They are indicators of whether a society is just, prepared, and humane. Climate change and war expose the fragility of that promise. They reveal how easily women’s health can be neglected, controlled, or sacrificed when systems are under pressure.

A serious response must therefore be both practical and political. It must reduce pollution, build resilient healthcare systems, protect sexual and reproductive rights, and listen to women living through crisis. It must also recognise that climate justice, peacebuilding, and public health are deeply connected.

The health of women and girls cannot remain an afterthought in the age of climate breakdown and armed conflict. If we are serious about protecting life, dignity, and the future, then the conversation must begin where so many of these crises are most powerfully felt: with women’s bodies, women’s rights, and women’s health.

About the author

Sadia Khalid is a Scientist-Physician (MBBS, MD) at Tallinn University of Technology. She is driven by a commitment to advance public health and scientific understanding. With research interests spanning molecular medicine, infectious diseases, bacteriology, hepatology, and gastroenterology, she aims to contribute meaningful, evidence-based insights that support health, safety, and community awareness.