Gender-Based Violence as a Sexual and Reproductive Health Crisis: Black Women Public Servants in South Carolina as a Case Study of the American South

Gender-based violence (GBV) shapes women’s lives beyond a single incident. For Black women in South Carolina, a state in the American South, it intersects with barriers to healthcare, threats to bodily autonomy and structural inequality. This is especially true in South Carolina where significant legal and political restrictions constrain access to reproductive healthcare. This study treats GBV as a sexual and reproductive health crisis and asks how Black women in public service understand and respond to it, drawing on semi-structured interviews with seven Black women public servants in South Carolina across government and nonprofit settings, analyzed thematically through a Black feminist framework. Participants described violence as an ongoing condition shaping access to care, emotional well-being and long-term safety, rather than a single event. Moreover, they defined success through shelter, therapy access and survivor trust rather than prosecution, grounding this framing in lived experience and community trust rather than institutional title. The findings further indicate that, from participants’ professional and community perspectives, legal remedies alone do not fully capture the complexity of GBV. Centering care, access and lived expertise offers a more grounded response to GBV in communities facing sustained structural crisis.