In Katrina’s wake, women unable to reach reproductive-health services

Securing basic reproductive- and sexual-health needs stands among the many challenges facing Hurricane Katrina's victims.

Photo courtesy of Warren Faidley, weatherstock.com.

Hurricane Katrina robbed hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast residents of their homes and livelihoods. In the days since the catastrophe, victims are working to put their lives back together in strange cities, often separated from their loved ones and their communities.  Securing basic reproductive- and sexual-health needs stands among the many challenges facing its victims.

Abortion and family-planning clinics are some of the hardest hit health-care providers. Planned Parenthood of Louisiana and the Mississippi Delta is in particularly dire straits: their New Orleans clinic is in ruins and remains closed for the foreseeable future; their Baton Rouge clinic has only recently reopened. 

Planned Parenthood of Houston and Southeast Texas is working closely with Planned Parenthood of Louisiana to ensure that individuals from Louisiana can continue to get birth control and other reproductive-health services. As a courtesy to women fleeing Hurricane Katrina, Planned Parenthood of Houston and Southeast Texas health centers will offer one free month of birth control or one free emergency contraception kit to displaced women.

“There have been a huge number of evacuees who have come to Texas, especially from Louisiana,” says Peter Durkin president and CEO, PPHSET. “Motels are sold out going all the way to San Antonio. We're offering a free month's supply of birth control pills and/or emergency contraception if they have either a Mississippi or Louisiana driver's license. During these calamities, sometimes you don't bring your pills with you, because you're trying to get out of there in one piece.”

Already health-care providers are facing an increased demand for abortion services. Women seeing an uncertain future may not feel that this is the time to start a family, or feel they must focus their energies on protecting the families they have and rebuilding their lives. Without reliable access to birth control, or because of a sexual assault, women are unable to prevent pregnancy. Health-care providers in Texas and Baton Rouge are struggling to meet the needs of so many women for safe abortion care—a particular challenge in a region so hostile to abortion-care providers.

Increased incidents of sexual and domestic violence are also threatening hurricane survivors. Reports of violence, including allegations of sexual assault and rape, have alarmed groups like Amnesty International, which monitors governments, shelters, prisons and refugee camps around the world for human-rights violations.

In an interview with Women's eNews, Sheila Dauer, Director of Women's Human Rights for Amnesty International USA, said relief groups have an obligation to make vulnerable populations a top priority when planning and operating shelters.

“With thousands of people thrown in there together, there are people extremely vulnerable to violence and abuse,” Dauer said. “The very young, the very old, women, children—and they have a human right to be protected.”

This problem is exacerbated by the destruction of shelters and clinics responsible for women's health and well-being.

According to Merni Carter, Executive Director of the Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence, many shelters have been destroyed and those still intact have been evacuated, leaving their residents displaced and particularly susceptible to violence. The Coalition also reports that many women are afraid to register with the Red Cross for fear that their batterers will use the registry to find them.

“Sadly domestic violence and child victimization are social problems that do not stop during this natural disaster.”

For more information, contact:
Kirsten Sherk
Senior Associate, Media Relations
e-mail: sherkk@ipas.org
phone: 919.960.5612
fax: 919.929.0258