Justice for pregnant women to keep their babies in prison!

The prison system has been around for many years. Mass incarceration has become a huge problem in the United States of America. The prisons are owned by corporations. These corporations earn a percentage of every prisoner that comes in, making our prison system severely flawed. The prisons separate the men and women into different parts of the building, and they come into no physical contact. This breaks families apart especially for the women who are pregnant and their spouse is on the other side of the building only communicating by letters which employees of the prison read before sending to the other side. There are some all men prisons and all women prisons. All women prisons seem to lack humane treatment especially for this women who are pregnant. “Although women comprise only about 10% of the overall imprisoned population in the United States, and they represent the fastest growing population within jails and prisons” (Lamaze International). This means that as the women population grows so should access to better health care, all women should have access to supplies such as pads and tampons, and also counseling after birth to deal with the emotional effects of being separated from their child and not being able to bond. Several thousand babies are born each year from women who are in the prison system. There is much physical, emotional, and mental abuse for women in America’s prison cells. Women lack the medical attention they need, the inhumane treatment they receive by giving birth, they are taken away from their children shortly after birth, and the mental and emotional trauma afterwards leaves women prisoners worse off than what they were before.
Just like any woman pregnant there are many steps to take care of while pregnant to ensure the a healthy baby at birth such as prenatal care and frequent check ups. Each woman has health care needs. Depending on the woman it can be very high or very minimal. “Many of these mothers have high-risk pregnancies due to the economic and social problems that led them to be incarcerated: poverty, lack of education, inadequate health care, and substance abuse” (Lamaze International). Treatments that are needed are not being given out the prisoners because of lack of funds or plain mistreatment. Often if a prisoner is complaining that they feel something wrong and having a history of telling lies guards will most likely ignore their needs to go see the nurse at the prison. This could lead to issues when there really is something wrong and needs to checked out. “Indigenous women are victimized and of the extent to which police often fail to respond to, much less protect, vulnerable Indigenous women. In the meantime, Indigenous women continue to experience high rates of racist and misogynist physical and sexual abuse, for which they are frequently blamed and to which police often fail to respond.” Women of color are often mistreated fairly worse than their other peers. They are more often ignored and not listened to. This not only puts the woman at danger but also the baby too.
Giving birth while in prison is not a pleasant experience. Women are not told if they are going to be induced or have a cesarian section until an hour before on the day of. They do not tell their women prisoners because they want to reduce the chance of escape. The prison believes if the women knows that it is time for to have her baby she will plan to get away to have her child in peace. Giving women that information in that small window of time frames gives women almost not time to prepare for what is about to come. Before the woman leaves the prison she is taken to a room and stripped completely so that the guard can issue a strip search. This is to ensure that the patient does not have any contraband and transporting it out of the prison. When the woman is cleared she is taken to the hospital shacked by a prison van. When the inmate arrives at the hospital she is usually in handcuffs. This is true also when she gives birth. The woman’s arms and legs are shacked to the bed. This is to ensure that while she is giving birth she does not try to go anywhere. “Human rights groups argue that the practice of shackling women while giving birth violates their constitutional rights, and several disturbing cases of have been reported in recent years” (Kaiser). Often while given birth the handcuffs are too tight and there is bruising and swelling around the areas that were shacked to the bed. “Despite the “all-eyes-watching” experience, close family and friends are not allowed in the room with the inmate” (Kaiser). The family of the woman are not informed until after she has given birth and returned back to the prison. The woman is only given 24 hours to spend with the baby and then is immediately taken back to prison. “Many describe the experience as the most painful part of inmate birth” (Kaiser). It is called the separation process. During this time the hospital likes to let the moms cuddle with skin to skin contact and breastfeed as much as possible to get some type of bonding experience before they are taken away from each other. New moms who are not in prison often get 2-3 days in the hospital to keep an eye on the patient and baby and to make sure everything is okay. The baby is left at the hospital until a family member comes to pick it up or placed into the foster care system due to the fact that there is no one able to take care of him or her.
New mothers are prone to postpartum depression. This is especially high for women in prison. “Parent-infant psychotherapy (PIP) is a dyadic intervention that works with parent and infant together, with the aim of improving the parent-infant relationship and promoting infant attachment and optimal infant development. PIP aims to achieve this by targeting the mother's view of her infant, which may be affected by her own experiences, and linking them to her current relationship to her child, in order to improve the parent-infant relationship directly” (Barlow). This is a system that works for mothers and children after they have been separated. They are programs in the prison that say to offer help to the women who have been taken away from their babies but they are often run by men. Those men who run to the program to supposedly help these women are usually transfers from all men facilities with most having no knowledge on how to deal with these issues and give the woman the best care possible. “Given the national emphasis on gender responsive treatment in prisons and jails, a window of opportunity exists to be a voice for these women and make significant changes in health care for this largely undeserved population.” Nurses can play a huge positive part in helping the women come out of depression and dealing with their anxiety and insomnia.
In conclusion they are many things to be said and done about the way that women who are pregnant in prison are treated. They lack treatment, they are shackled like dogs, and they are isolated in the worse form. There are solutions to this that can help this problem so that the mother doesn't receive so many harmful effects when returning to prison after birth and also the baby. An Indiana prison has a program where 10 pregnant mothers are taken on a special floor of the prison and get to keep their babies until their stay in prison is up. They have a very supportive community, the nurse is able to be accessed 24 hours and 7 days a week, babies and mother are given check ups regularly. The women have access to cribs, clothes, and food for the baby. It gives mom and baby the time to be able to bond, and there are various positive effects for women who get to keep their baby when they get out of prison so they do not repeat the cycle of the revolving door.