Women of Color
Approximately 30 percent of all women in the United States are women of color. In South Dakota, Native Americans comprise 8.5 percent of the population, and thousands of Latinas, African American, and Asian women live throughout the state. Although women of color face many of the same health issues as white women, systemic obstacles disproportionately and adversely affect their access to quality reproductive-health care. Factors that contribute to this problem include: insufficient research on minority women's health, language barriers, the lack of cultural-competency training, and the shortage and inequitable distribution of minority and women health-care professionals. · Women of color experience shockingly high maternal-mortality rates.
· The devastating rates of STDs and HIV are particularly acute for women of color, whose rates of infection are dramatically higher than those of white women.
· The reproductive health of women of color – a disproportionate number of whom are low-income, and in South Dakota are dependent upon inadequately funded Indian Health Services medical care – is threatened by limited access to basic reproductive-health care, including family-planning services and abortion care.
· Researchers have identified extremely troubling disparities in access to pain management during labor and delivery for women with limited English proficiency. As a result of these inequities and structural challenges, the reproductive-health needs of many women of color are going unmet in South Dakota. We must overcome these obstacles to guarantee every woman the right to make personal decisions regarding the full range of reproductive-health choices.
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