It was a hot, sunny December day in the rural Dominican Republic province of Azua. I was part of a group of journalists traveling with U.S. state lawmakers who were visiting the country to learn about the consequences of its total abortion ban and a range of other gender justice issues.

We were visiting a local primary care clinic to learn about the reproductive and sexual health services available there. The building’s electric blue exterior matched the color of the near-cloudless sky almost perfectly. Inside, the lights were mostly off and fans were running to keep the clinic cool. Staff told us about the steps they’ve taken to make contraception more accessible, including working with local churches and parents to reduce stigma. They showed us the clinic’s separate, private entrance and waiting area for pregnant girls who may be ashamed to be seen there.

It was in that small waiting room that the conversation took a turn.

Six out of every 10 pregnant women who visit the clinic, the head doctor told us, are Haitian. This is no surprise, given that there are many Dominicans of Haitian descent and Haitian-born people who have migrated to the Dominican Republic to work.

Pregnant women may also travel from Haiti to the Dominican Republic seeking health care, because while the Dominican Republic has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the Americas—out of every 100,000 live births, 107 people die of pregnancy-related causes—that rate is more than three times higher in neighboring Haiti.

But then the doctor went on. “They say they’re Dominican,” he said. “But they don’t speak Spanish.”

To anyone familiar with the history of the Dominican Republic, and with its history of antihaitianismo, or anti-Haitian racism, this is a chilling statement.

In 1937, on the orders of dictator Rafael Trujillo, the Dominican military murdered thousands of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent, many of whom had come to the country to work in sugar cane fields in accordance with Trujillo’s own policies. Soldiers reportedly used the pronunciation of the Spanish word for parsley, “perejil,” as the test of someone’s origin, because the word is difficult to pronounce for speakers of Haitian Creole or French. More than 20,000 people are believed to have been murdered, though death toll estimates vary widely.

Antihaitianismo has never faded. In fact, many people I spoke with in the Dominican Republic said that the current president, Luis Abinader, has made it worse than ever.

In this Carribbean nation, sex education is sparse, rates of child marriage are high, access to contraception is extremely poor, and the constitution defines life as beginning at conception, meaning that abortion is prohibited with absolutely no exceptions. All of this contributes to high rates of pregnancy-related death and an overall lack of personal freedom for women and girls.

And throughout our trip, it was clear at every turn that Haitian women and Dominicans of Haitian descent face the worst conditions of all thanks to their doubly marginalized status in Dominican society.

“People say that Dominicans are racist toward Haitians,” the doctor at the Azua clinic said to us. “But how can we be racist, when we are also Black?”

He then told a common story: That antihaitianismo stems from the Haitian occupation of the Dominican Republic from 1822 to 1844. At the time, Haiti was in dire financial straits after being made an international pariah and forced to pay “reparations” to deposed slave owners after its overthrow of French rule. So the fledgling country invaded the Dominican Republic, in part to prevent France from using it as a base to........

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