Women of Color

Women of color experience the greatest amount of all forms of violence from that in an intimate partner relationship to that perpetrated through systematic oppression that pervades our institutions and society. Experiencing racism at a constant level has now formally been attributed to preterm births and low birth weight babies. Because of economic oppression, women of color are most likely to live in communities and work at jobs that maximize exposure of environmental toxins in their lives. This type of environmental racism is a further contributor to what may cause the maternal and infant well-being disparities experienced by such communities. Women of color experience regular violence perpetrated by the criminal justice system. The long history of rape, murder and torture of women of color through the colonizers conquest and later slavery are evident today. The continued trafficking of women is one of the more obvious forms that continue today. Of the more subtle forms include the reproductive health policies that target these women for sterilization without their consent and other atrocities that have been experienced in the not so distant past. Even if these practices are being curbed (they usually are not public until after the fact and even then, they are not widely spread), women of color are still targeted for forms of birth control with the greatest risks attached such as Depo, Norplant and Quinicrine that have sterilizing effects of their own. All of these forms of violence significantly impact a woman's childbearing experience. Since the origins of violence have a long history that today's dominant belief systems are rooted in, no matter how subtly, these beliefs are often held by many of the individuals who come into contact in a "helping" capacity during the childbearing year. The parallels of the violations experienced against these woman are not acknowledged because they are systematic, normalized, minimized and otherwise, under the surface. This fact, that the perpetrators are often the ones who make the rules and deny blame for their consequences, applies to the other specific categories of mothers below.