Comments on: Abuse of Pregnant Prisoners Goes Beyond Shackling During Labor

By: rachel

rachel — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 06:19:39 +0000

You are so right on, thank you for writing this!

By: Academic

Academic — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 23:50:16 +0000

We had a legislator (who was a nurse by trade) here who tried to get the metal shackles changed to plastic shackles for women in active labor.

She got taken out the next election because she was “soft on crime.”

wtf?

By: Wednesday

Wednesday — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 14:56:48 +0000

This is awful. And the “they deserve it” mentality is horribly prevalent. I mentioned it when we were visiting my in-laws the other day, and the conversation went something like this:

Me: “Prenatal care is terrible in prisons [...] cases of women who are nonviolent offenders being ignored by guards and forced to give birth alone inside their cells.
Father-in-law: “Yeah, well, they’re in prison, so you figure there has to be a reason for it.”
Me: “Nonviolent offenders? People who steal money to feed their kids deserve this? Okay, fine, even if you think the women deserve this, do you think their babies deserve to die?”
Father-in-law: “Well, I guess not.”

My father-in-law is generally not a nasty, vindictive guy. He’s certainly not a rabid woman-hating anti-choicer, not by any stretch – I’m not sure, but I think he might even be more or less pro-choice. Yet he’s perfectly willing to use pregnancy and childbirth and denial of medical care in these circumstances as punishment. And, despite the conversation previously being about how much he loves his 19-month grandson, and about how thrilled he was about his daughter having her second in 8 months, he didn’t give a damn about the welfare of the fetuses and babies of women in prison – until I pointed out that they suffer from denial of medical treatment too.

To me, this betrays a deepset cultural attitude that pregnancy and childbirth are acceptable means of punishing and controlling women.

If the “pro-life” movement wants to prove they don’t think pregnancy should be used to punish women, they should be protesting outside of prisons, not outside of clinics.

By: DPark

DPark — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:14:34 +0000

There’s an attorney at NAF who works on these issues. I also wrote a paper on the subject and found out he’d published a legal analysis in the Harvard Law Review advocating for reproductive rights for inmates. As far as I know, he’s working on these issues now. I don’t want to publish contact info here, but he was amazingly helpful for my research and for those who want to learn more I think he’s a great resource and is doing amazing work.

By: karak

karak — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 09:53:36 +0000

This topic was my senior seminar paper. Aaah, 20 pages on The Reproductive Rights of Incarcerated Women in The American Prison System. Brings back memories of headaches and ulcers, especially the part where my professor told me he didn’t think it was constitutional issue, then amended to say I couldn’t find any research, then finally admitted he didn’t know anything about the topic, so I should pick something easier/that’s been done to death. Even during my presentation, he had to make a little remark to the effect that he didn’t know my subject very well.

By: Comrade Kevin

Comrade Kevin — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:02:46 +0000

We still believe that those who transgress deserve to be punished, but not just punished—tortured while having their humanity destroyed in the process. No redemption. No sympathy.

By: Bitter Scribe

Bitter Scribe — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:29:41 +0000

Yes, but those women were prevented from having abortions, and that’s the important thing, right?

[/sarcasm]

They say the measure of a society is how it treats its most helpless members. Based on the above, I’d say we get an F-minus.

By: Starfoxy

Starfoxy — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 22:22:44 +0000

Excellent post. And that dangerous myth that criminals get better health care than the general population is part of what allows judges to think they are doing the right thing by imprisoning addicted pregnant women for the sake of the fetus.

By: annaham

annaham — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 20:33:04 +0000

Holy hell. Thank you for posting about this, Cara.

By: Emily

Emily — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 20:21:59 +0000

Wow, Cara. I hope you rant more often. This is an excellent post and I whole heartedly agree with you. The state of prison medical care is abysmal, and of course no one should face any of the scenarios you describe. It is shameful and cruel and it certainly should be unusual.