Invisible Coloniality and the Politics of Suffering: An Analysis of the Femicide of Pregnant Women
No. 92 (2025-04-08)Author(s)
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Alejandra Bello-UrregoUniversidad de Antioquia, ColombiaORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7530-2853
Abstract
This article explores the femicide of pregnant women through the lens of feminist and decolonial political theory. It examines how the exclusion of femicide from the causes officially recognized in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) definition of maternal mortality relates to the persistence and reconfiguration of colonial mechanisms that define the human. I argue that cruelty—operating through a colonial regime that renders ordinary violence invisible and sustains a political economy of suffering— classifies bodies on a daily basis, determining which are deemed worthy or unworthy of care. This is a theoretical investigation grounded in documentary analysis of both primary and secondary sources. The corpus comprises 36 documents selected through a systematic review of scientific literature available in international, interdisciplinary academic databases. The findings show that globally, racialized, impoverished, and young pregnant women are more likely to die from gender-based violence than from the maternal mortality causes recognized by the WHO. The exclusion of femicide from these official categories exposes the persistence of colonial power structures in the WHO’s regime of intelligibility, which continues to normalize certain forms of violence. This exclusion highlights how the invisibilization of subaltern suffering—and the normalization of indifference that sustains it—remains central to the ongoing denial of full human recognition.
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