Female prisoners are routinely shackled during pregnancy, childbirth and recovery in the US, even though the practice can be extremely dangerous.
For example, a Jane Doe in a Milwaukee prison was repeatedly raped while pregnant and after giving birth. She was also shackled during labor, delivery and recovery.
Sign the petition to call on the US to outlaw shackling pregnant women!
The ACLU has spoken out against this inhumane treatment loudly. For a nation that claims to be pro-family and pro-child, we sure do treat the women who faciliate these things horribly. Prisoners are people too, a fact that many seem to forget. Shackling women during child birth makes it impossible
With the rates of incarceration for non-violent crimes sky-rocketing and the prison industrial complex booming, it is very likely that the women shackled during childbirth did nothing more than possess a small amount of marijuana, or something similarly harmless.
But the bottom line is: it doesn't matter what they did to land in prison, no one deserves to be treated like this, least not pregnant women.
When women are shackled during pregnancy, labor and childbirth, their care suffers tremendously. The medical procedures they require get more difficult and women will often pull against restraints because they can't help it and end up hurting themselves and potentially their babies in the process.
Women who have been subjected to this end up with cuts and bruises all over their bodies from straining against restrainst during childbirth. Shackling also makes a healthy recovery super difficult. Shackles also make balance difficult and so falls that may harm the fetus are often reported.
Not only is shackling a pregnant woman dangerous, but it is degrading. Giving birth is an extremely intense experience and
treating a woman like an animal during the process serves no purpose but to humiliate her and make it more difficult for her to have a successful, healthy birth.
Please sign to stop this barbaric practice in the U.S. immediately.