Ethnic, racial and gender discrimination is ingrained in Brazilian society, and health services participate in these violent practices.
For many women who choose to give birth, this can be one of the most intimate and vulnerable moments of their lives, as the company and environment during childbirth often drastically determine the outcome. Although the support a woman receives at this time is crucial, countless women around the world are often victims of obstetric violence. In Brazil, where obstetric violence is already widespread, this problem for black women is further compounded by institutional racism.
One in four women in Brazil suffers obstetric violence in childbirth and according to the Painel de Monitoramento de Mortalidade Materna do Brasil 61.3% of these women are black pregnant women. Statistics also show that black women are twice as likely to die from causes related to pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum as white women.
They are more likely to suffer obstetric violence such as lack of information and privacy; inappropriate comments; excessive touching; horizontal delivery; absence of a birth attendant; absence of midwives; high rate of cesarean sections; abusive use of oxytocin and episiotomy; and disregard for ethnic and racial differences. This treatment is compounded by their general lack of access to health services.
Although cesarean section is necessary and life-saving in certain situations, according to WHO there is no evidence that it reduces maternal and neonatal mortality by more than 10 percent of births. Cesarean section should only be performed when medically necessary, but in Brazil surgery is the norm and vaginal delivery the exception. The lack of understanding of structural racism at the interpersonal and institutional levels greatly affects the enactment of policies by hospitals to guarantee the rights of pregnant black women.
The women photographed in this project were survivors or unwitting witnesses to these violences. They chose to become companions, doulas, midwives, obstetric nurses, and activists to provide another possible path for black mothers, so that they and their babies can also live a birth accompanied, without fear, empowered, surrounded by love and the ancestral knowledge that our bodies have of giving birth.