Giving Voice to Mothers: Racial Disparities
Minority women face dramatically higher rates of birth abuse
32% of Indigenous women and 25% of Hispanic women report mistreatment. Black women are 2x as likely to be coerced into unconsented procedures.
The Vedam team broke their mistreatment data down by race. The headline result: 32 percent of Indigenous women and 25 percent of Hispanic women in the sample reported mistreatment, compared with 14 percent of white women.
Black women in the sample reported being coerced into procedures without consent at roughly twice the white rate. The disparities held after controlling for income, education, and clinical risk factors.
This means the gaps are not explained by which kinds of women are more likely to have complicated pregnancies. They reflect differential treatment by the system. The pattern aligns with what shows up in maternal mortality data, where affluent and college-educated Black women still face worse outcomes than poor white women.
32%
Indigenous women, mistreatment rate
25%
Hispanic women
14%
White women
2x
Black women coercion rate
Why it matters
When Indigenous women face twice the mistreatment rate of white women in the same care system, the gap is not random. It is a feature of the care.
This is one finding from the research library behind How to Birth a Mother. Everything here traces back to a study, a dataset, or a systematic review.