Why Are So Many Black Women Suffering Through Infertility In Silence?

Infertility affects at least 12 percent of all women up to the age of 44, and studies suggest Black women may be almost twice as likely to experience infertility as white women.

Yet only about 8 percent of Black women between the ages of 25 and 44 seek medical help to get pregnant, compared to 15 percent of white women.

To better understand what’s driving the disparity between

the number of Black women suffering from infertility and those pursuing treatment, WomensHealthMag.com and OprahMag.com teamed up with the Black Women’s Health Imperative and Celmatix, a startup bringing personalized medicine to women's reproductive health and fertility, to survey more than 1,000 women of multiple races about their fertility.

One thing was apparent: Socioeconomic factors are clearly at play. In our survey, women of a variety of ethnic identities cited cost as the biggest obstacle that would prevent them from seeking treatment.

But also enlightening—and alarming: Black women were more than twice as likely as white women to say that they wouldn’t feel comfortable talking about their fertility issues with friends, family, a partner, their doctor, or even a support group.

We spoke with fertility doctors, mental-health experts, and Black women who have undergone infertility treatments to further explore both the systemic and the deeply ingrained cultural factors that may be stopping them from seeking treatment—and impacting their experiences when they do seek treatment. These are some of our findings.

Black women have understandable hesitations about discussing infertility issues with their doctors.

In our survey, Black women were more than 50 percent more likely than white women to say they felt uncomfortable talking to their doctors about fertility.

"Within the Black community specifically, there is still a mistrust of the medical system," says Desireé McCarthy-Keith, M.D., M.P.H., a reproductive endocrinologist at Shady Grove Fertility in Atlanta, Georgia. She cites incidents like the infamous Tuskegee Study, in which researchers deprived Black men with syphilis of the appropriate medical care for years without their knowledge.

"People were just victimized by the medical system and monitored without treatment," she says. "So there are people who are still very skeptical about it."

This lack of trust can extend to the fertility space, particularly when Black women have had negative experiences with the medical community.

The stereotype that Black women don't have fertility issues is persistent—and harmful.