Intersectional Violence Against Pregnant Haitian Women

Despite sharing the same island, Haiti and the Dominican Republic were shaped by two very different colonial projects, French plantation slavery in the west and Spanish rule in the east. Those origins did more than carve a geographic boundary across Hispaniola, they forged a linguistic, cultural, infrastructural, and especially racial divide that drives conflict. Haiti’s terrain and geographical position made it a prime site for the importation and exploitation of enslaved Africans, whose shared struggle under brutal French rule ultimately sparked the world’s first successful slave revolt. Independence has continued to be expensive for Haiti, because of its indication of a failed European occupation. Haiti continued to develop as a Black republic born of resistance—and cast its neighbor to the east in opposition. Over time, the Dominican Republic defined itself against Blackness, fashioning narrow ideas of national purity that left dark‑skinned people on the margins. In the Dominican Republic, medical institutions and citizenship laws are weaponized to enforce anti‑Haitian racism, criminalizing Black pregnancy, erasing legal identity, and turning hospitals into extensions of the border,so that pregnant Haitian women become among the most vulnerable people in the world, their claim to care and belonging perpetually denied (Romero 2008).

The border is more than a line on a map. It is a threshold of belonging where race, nationhood, and basic rights collide. The colonial legacies of both countries have been turned into bureaucratic tools, paperwork, civil registries, hospital policies, that enforce statelessness and control Black bodies. Immigration enforcement, healthcare denial, and the deportation of pregnant Haitian women from Dominican hospitals criminalize Black pregnancy and racializing access to care (Santelices 2022). The Dominican state transforms medical institutions into extensions of border enforcement. Hospitals, instead of being sites of care and protection, become arenas of surveillance and control.  To grasp the full weight of this divide, we must step into the shoes of pregnant Haitian women, whose very survival is contested at the intersection of race, gender, medicine, and state power (Crenshaw 2012). This racialized violence is not incidental. It is structured, intentional, and deeply rooted in the border itself, becoming a tool for reinforcing national identity by rejecting and expelling Black bodies. 

Colonial Foundations of Racialized Exclusion

Dominican bureaucratic violence is most apparent in its relationship with black women, as can be seen in their civil registration. Haitian migrants and even their Dominican-born children have been retroactively stripped of citizenship, their births erased from records, and their legal identities rendered null (Yates 2021). The government is erasing people from legal existence, expressing exactly what black bodies mean to them, nothing. The Dominican Republic has gone beyond violating international law, it has completely undermined the value and humanity of a Black life. Here lies a form of postcolonial statelessness, where citizenship is not defined by connection to land or family, but rather by who a country deems worthy. There is a dual displacement of Black women of Haitian descent and Haitians migrants, displaying that their subjugation is intersectional and prevailing despite changes in racial consciousness internationally. These dark skinned women are standing with centuries of oppression on their shoulders and discrimination facing their every move. 

What does this mean for individuals? Scholar Lani Guinier frames citizenship as a performance of belonging, a certification that you have a right to exist, and to survive. For Haitians and their descendents no performance will ever be enough. Colonial standards function in opposition to stateless Black female migrants (Guinier 2016). The markers of exclusion are deeply embodied, both explicitly and implicitly. Skin tone, surname, and accent are racialized and weaponized not only in interpersonal interactions but also in official records like passports and civil registries (Romero 2008). This profiling is not unique to Haitians; in the United States, names perceived as black are “more likely to elicit negative presumptions, such as being less educated, productive, trustworthy and reliable”  (Abel 2023). Citizenship is far from just a legal category, becoming a racialized performance in which Haitians are set up to fail. In this context, even documented Haitians are treated as threats. Their bodies are racialized, their motives are suspect, and their pregnancies are criminalized. Dominican nationalism is constructed in opposition to Haiti and Blackness, and so the Haitian woman’s womb becomes a perceived threat. Every Haitian birth, from this perspective, is not a life, but rather a demonstration of a country’s failed migration policy. This logic is the very background that threatens the lives of Haitian women every day. 

From Hospitals to Handcuffs: Birth as Border Control

“Women and children first.” A pregnant woman is both, but due to race, ethnicity, and citizenship, Haitians are put last. The deportation of over 400 pregnant Haitians from Dominican hospitals reflect a socio-political agenda that values control over care. What’s happening to Haitian women isn’t a humanitarian failure, it’s a policy choice. The hospital, traditionally a place of refuge in moments of physical vulnerability, is reimagined as a surveillance zone. For Haitian women, stepping into a Dominican hospital is a gamble: they risk detention, deportation, or medical neglect. The question becomes not “Will I survive this birth?” but “Will I be allowed to?” Many arrive alone, often after traveling long distances on foot or by bus, hungry, exhausted, and terrified. Some don’t speak Spanish, which further complicates their ability to advocate for themselves. According to the Pulitzer Center, the language barrier between Haitian-Creole and Spanish keeps Haitian women from being able to translate the severity of their experiences, medical needs, and documentation status (Santelices 2022). 

The fear of being deported during or immediately after childbirth has led some women to forgo hospitals altogether, opting instead for home births or underground clinics. Dominican hospitals have been reported to withhold emergency care, conduct raids, and even arrest or deport women directly from maternity wards, weaponizing their vulnerability in moments of medical dependence. Medical records, originally meant to ensure care, become tools of persecution, tracking undocumented status, denying future entry, or justifying deportation (Santelices 2022). There truly is no safe way to give birth as a Haitian Migrant because of the constant risks. 

Even in the United States, Black women experience disproportionately high mortality rates due to the dismissal of their pain and failure to provide adequate care. Simultaneously, the medical industry has layers of discrimination in education, opportunity, and employment that keep Black women underrepresented in medicine (Mckoy 2023). The institutions themselves were not built to care for these pregnant women. This inability to access safe and respectful care doesn’t just affect birth outcomes, it constitutes a form of structural violence. Foucault argues, biopolitical power operates by deciding who lives and who dies, who is cared for and who is left to perish. The state’s regulation of Haitian women’s reproduction is a chilling example of this (Adams 2017). In denying care, the Dominican state enacts a violent rejection not only of Haitian women but of the futures they carry. It reinforces a message: you are not welcome, your child is not welcome, and your presence is a problem. 

Nationalist Narratives 

In 2021, the Dominican government rescinded a key protection that had shielded pregnant women from deportation (Santelices 2022). This move marked a terrifying shift, one in which even the brief window of humanity around childbirth was closed. What does it mean when a state criminalizes birth? When a woman in labor is treated not as a patient, but as an illegal body to be removed? It signals that reproductive care is no longer a right, but a privilege reserved for the racially and nationally “deserving.” Dominican lawmakers perpetuate a fantasy of national purity while benefiting from the very bodies they exclude (Santelices 2022). The hypocrisy of a monocultural purity is that the idea of whiteness is built directly in contrast to that of Black identity. This racial stratification of belonging means that no matter the assimilation, contribution, or documentation, western anglo-utopias have no room to recognize the significant lives of Black people.

To justify hospital deportations, officials point to scarcity: “We just don’t have the resources” (Njoku 2023). But that argument isn’t neutral, it’s used selectively against people whose identities are already seen as less valuable. Haitian migrants are painted as a burden while their contributions to the country are completely ignored. It’s the same story we see in the U.S., where undocumented people are labeled “takers” even though they’re holding up entire industries. Haitian migrants are seen as useful when they’re working, but disposable the moment they need help.

Counter-Narratives: Reclaiming Black Girlhood and Belonging

But even in the face of this dehumanization, people are pushing back. While the state treats Haitian women as burdens, many are finding ways to reclaim their stories, their worth, and their power from the ground up. One particularly striking example is Muñecas Negras, a grassroots initiative that uses doll-making to foster racial pride and community healing. Composed primarily of Black girls and young women, Muñecas Negras challenges the dominant aesthetics and ideologies that have long erased or vilified Afro-descendant identity in the Dominican Republic (Belique 2022).

On the surface, making dolls might seem like a small act. But as history shows us, representation in childhood shapes the foundation of self-worth and identity. The “Doll Test,” conducted by psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark in the 1940s, revealed how early exposure to white-dominated beauty standards contributed to internalized racism among Black children in the United States. When asked to assign positive traits to either a Black or white doll, most children, including many Black children, chose the white doll. The test was later used as evidence in Brown v. Board of Education to argue that segregation harms children's psychological development (Legal Defense Fund 2024). Muñecas Negras is not just about toys. It’s about crafting new narratives, challenging dominant frameworks, and reclaiming Black girlhood from erasure. In a society where textbooks, billboards, and media rarely affirm Black identity, a handmade Black doll becomes a radical act of love and survival. Their work also offers a blueprint for coalition building (Belique 2022). These young women are doing the cultural work of resisting anti-Blackness not through protest alone, but through education, storytelling, and community art. This form of resistance is deeply rooted in care, a refusal to allow the state to define their worth or dictate their futures. In the absence of institutional protections, they create their own.

What we see in the Dominican Republic is more than a broken health system or an overburdened bureaucracy, it is a deliberate choice to value some lives over others (Pinheiro 2021). By treating pregnant Haitian women as threats rather than patients, the state turns hospitals into extensions of its border wall. Scarcity becomes an excuse to deny care, and paperwork becomes a weapon to erase Black bodies. Yet even as the state tries to confine Haitian women to invisibility, they push back in maternity wards, in home births, in community art spaces. Their resistance reminds us that belonging is not granted by papers or politicians but claimed by people (Belique 2022). 

Reflection 

Working on this paper pushed me to build something truly cumulative. I loved diving deep into the specific experiences of pregnant Haitian women and seeing how every detail, civil registries, hospital policies, community art, fits into a bigger picture of power and exclusion. I came into this class thinking about race and migration mostly through a U.S. lens, but exploring the colonial split of Hispaniola opened my eyes to how a racial spectrum still shapes who gets care, who gets rights, and who is left out entirely.

Focusing on mothers made me realize just how much is passed through birth: identity, health, even citizenship, although in this case that right is snatched away. Babies don’t come with passports and their development is so reactive to their environment. When a state treats a womb as a threat, it tells you what it values, and what it doesn’t. I can see just how lucky I am that my mom was born in a safe place. From the work I am simultaneously doing in my extractivism and global development class, it is clear that equality stands in opposition to human history.