According to Edgar A Barens in his film, A Sentence of Their Own, six percent of women entering prison are pregnant.. And pregnant, or not, two-thirds of women in prison are incarcerated for a nonviolent crime. The U.S. prison system was designed for men, so women in general, and pregnant women in particular, are treated like men. In many states prison officials do not recognize gender differences as applied to incarceration.
But there are differences, especially if a woman is pregnant. One of the biggest issues being discussed is whether pregnant women should be handcuffed, shackled, and sometimes outfitted with a belly chain during transport, and in the delivery room. While those procedures are commonly used with male prisoners to prevent escaping, using such devices during delivery is “tantamount to torture”, according to Gail Smith, executive director of Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers. There are no statistics concerning how many pregnant women tried to escape during labor. In Chicago, according to the Cook County Sheriff Department, there have been no attempted escapes by pregnant women in eleven years.
Ten states do not allow women to be shackled or otherwise restrained during labor and delivery. In other states, the practice still exists. When one realizes that the inmate giving birth is always accompanied by at least one correctional officer, often two, and that the officers are almost uniformly armed, the reasoning behind demanding the physical restraint of a woman giving birth seems unfathomable.
Handcuffs, shackles and belly chains are just some of the problems pregnant women in prison face. Healthy diets are almost nonexistent. Pre-natal care is at the hands of prison medical staff. The mostly male officers are not knowledgeable about pregnancy and labor. Over- crowded prisons and high noise levels are not something Dr. Spock ever wrote about, but are something pregnant inmates contend with.
Perhaps the saddest part of being pregnant in prison is the knowledge that once you deliver your baby you will have a very short time to bond with it. Few prisons have programs in which a mother is allowed to have up to three months to be with her child, as sometimes happens in the federal system. Usually, a woman must surrender her child to her family a day or two after giving birth, but sadly, more often the child is committed to foster care. Depending on the state, a women can have her parental rights terminated in as little as six months if she is incarcerated. Her child is then placed in a foster home, while adoption is sought.
As if given birth while in prison isn’t sad enough, some women suffer from post-partum depression and are tended to by an overworked and under staffed psychology department, if one even exists. Battling depression is difficult; in prison it can be far worse.
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