Gender, disaster, and women's access to contraception and reproductive health care

Despite an increasing focus on health in disasters and the intersection of gender and disaster, there are few studies on women's health and access to essential reproductive health care during and after disasters. Even though contraceptives have an objective importance in maintaining reproductive health, there have been policy changes in the United States that run counter to this need, leading some to perceive women's health care as superfluous or morally wrong. With such a negative perception of women's reproductive health care, how are state‐level contraceptive policies and emergency refill laws constructed in a way that compromises women's ability to maintain an emergency supply of contraceptives and/or hinders their contraceptive access in disasters? In this review, I describe literature that answers this question while highlighting the lack of literature on this specific intersection. Additionally, I describe current policies that address this question. I then present a discussion and directions for future research to conclude this paper.