Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 - 2 comments

In labor and in chains: Pregnancy and prisons

Imagine a woman giving birth handcuffed and her feet shackled. Do pregnant women in prison deserve human rights, or can pregnancy become a way to avoid jail?

All over the world, pregnant women struggle for basic human rights.

In chains

In the US, pregnant women serving time have been routinely shackled during labor and childbirth, despite the danger to the mother and child, according to Malika Saada Saar, founder and executive director of the Rebecca Project for Human Rights. In a blog-post published at RH Reality Check, she tells us that the issue of shackling pregnant women is still being debated.

The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) in September 2008 ended shackling mothers as a matter of routine course in all federal correctional facilities. State legislatures and Departments of Correction have also responded to the sea change in shackling policy. Most recently, New Mexico, New York, and Texas have enacted laws prohibiting the practice of shackling pregnant women in nearly all circumstances.

Fighting the system

Malika Saada Saar features a video on her blog-post at RH Reality Check about a mother,  Shawanna Nelson, who was shackled during labor, but who brought a lawsuit against the Arkansas Department of Corrections for cruel and unusual punishment:

Malika Saada Saar says:

Thanks to [Shawanna Nelson's] courage and the common sense of a panel of judges, the 8^th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled and the shackling of prisoners during labor is unconstitultional.

Pregnancy as a bargaining tool

Why are rights for pregnant women in prison so controversial? Different countries have different viewpoints about the debate.

In Russia Today, a Russian broadcasting channel,  the subject is mentioned:

Skeptics think some mothers deliberately get pregnant simply to ease life in prison. Hospital leave, then lots of scheduled time with your child – it is all better than sitting in a stone cell, they claim.

And there are women for whom it seems that pregnancy is the only way to escape a sentence, as was the case back in June, when a British woman incarcerated and sentenced to death in Laos due to drug smuggling got pregnant in prison and escaped being executed, since the Laos government would not execute a pregnant woman. The claims made according to the Daily Express, a British newspaper, are that she got artificially inseminated “to secure a more lenient term”.

Pregnancy as a get out of jail free card?

In Argentina, according to Ajintem, an information portal for  migration information, a law was passed last year specifying that pregnant women, women with children younger than 5 and those with handicapped children would benefit from spending their prison term at home under house arrest.

This law would benefit not only the mother, who in prison wouldn’t receive suitable health care during her pregnancy. It would also help the child, who would either be raised without a mother, or in prison, an unsafe environment.

However, the message is for magistrates to follow the spirit of the law and grant this permission to those women not involved in violent crimes. The rest of the civilian population shouldn’t see pregnancy as a get out of jail free card.

Children growing up without mothers

In the Canary Islands, according to Prisiones y Penas, a blog about the issues surrounding jails and prisons, women are allowed to keep their children of up to 3 years of age in their cells, but in the company of other inmates – an unsafe environment.

Thus, pregnant women or women with children under 3 are encouraged, upon entry to the prison, to send their child off to family members because it isn’t good for the child to grow up behind bars.

This is also the case in Peru and Russia.

Why doesn’t the US allow women to keep their babies in prison?

In the US, there are only two correctional facilities which allow prison inmates to keep their babies with them, in New York and in Nebraska, as told by renowned photographer Jane Evelyn Atwood in her 3 part photo documentary for Amnesty International,  called Too Much Time, where she visited dozens of prisons all over the world to record and document the lives of inmates.

Atwood explains that the reason the US correctional system does generally not allow women with babies to keep them, is due to the hostage situation. In the Prison Photography Blog they address this claim:

Children are excluded from all but a couple of US prisons. The security threat is cited as the reason: a child inside a prison is a constant vulnerable life and constant hostage target. The claim seems a little bogus when penal systems of other countries are brought into consideration.

The Atwood documentary in the Amnesty International site features both a section on the process of giving birth in shackles as told in Vanessa’s Baby and another on prison systems and motherhood.

Women speak out about their children and prison life

Geraldin Rodríguez, an Argentinean spending time in an Ecuadorian jail due to drug trafficking tells Marcos Brugiati, a writer who contributes with the art related online publication Plastica-Argentina, a story about getting pregnant in prison. She was allowed to keep her baby with her, but decided that the child needed to grow up free:

I decided he should leave to live, I was afraid he would suffer the same traumas I have today. After a year my brother took him away and is caring for him along with his wife.

A motherless child
Juvinete is in a Spanish prison, and was pregnant when she was incarcerated for drug trafficking. She tells her story to regional Spanish newspaper NorteCastilla. Three years after giving birth to her baby in prison, her child had to leave her side, and was sent to a foster family. Juvinete sees her daughter every 15 days and every two months she gets a 2 week leave to spend time with her.

However, things don’t seem to be looking up: there is a chance Juvinete will be deported to her natal Brazil, and she fears for the consequences this change would have on her child. She does have advice for any woman who decide to get pregnant while in jail:

I try to convince them not to get pregnant while inside because seeing a child deprived of their freedom is very hard, it’s irresponsible. They don’t have to pay for our mistakes.

“My family didn’t even know I was in labor”

In Woman and Prison, a website dedicated to women’s experiences in the correctional system, inmate Kebby Warner speaks of her own pregnancy while doing time in a US prison and having her child taken away from her. Here is an excerpt where she writes about the birthing process:

During the labor, no one is allowed in the delivery room. My family didn’t even know I was in labor or had her until after I left the hospital. During the three days some of the guards stayed in the room, but most of the time, when the nurses asked them to sit outside the door, they complied. I have heard horror stories of women being chained to the delivery bed. I am so grateful as to have not experienced this. Most of the nurses treated me as a human instead of a prisoner.

You can read more testimonies about growing up with a parent in prison in Women and Prison.

So what do you think?

There are a few questions that come to mind:

• What is it like to be pregnant and have a child behind bars?
• Should women in prisons be a priority when there are other women outside of correctional facilities without medical assistance?
• Should maternity overrule any other legal conditions to ensure a pregnant woman’s human rights?

Image used to illustrate post is “17 de noviembre” by daquella manera.

Guest Editor

Juliana Rincon

Teacher and Writer, Global Voices Online

About

I live and work in Colombia, where I teach a course on emerging media to Communications students and I curate and write content for Global Voices Online on citizen uploaded video.