Giving Birth Behind Bars

Women, who constitute the fastest growing prison population in the United States, face a dim outlook when their jail term coincides with pregnancy.

Prisons, which were built to house men, are not necessarily equipped to handle women’s health and reproductive needs. Prenatal care is often limited, confounding the fact that pregnant prisoners are without the support of relatives or friends.

Labor is an anxious time for most expecting mothers, but even more so for prisoners. Women are sometimes forced to remain in shackles during labor; only two states (Illinois and California) regulate the use of restraints on pregnant women. Even though most women are in jail for non-violent offenses, shackles are used during transport to outside medical facilities.

The Web site Women and Prison: A Site for Resistance helps chronicle the plight of incarcerated mothers. Kebby Warner, a twenty-five-year-old woman, writes about her experience of being pregnant while incarcerated: “In order to leave the prison for a “medical” run, you are forced to go through a period of humiliation each time with a MDOC [corrections] guard. You are strip searched completely upon leaving and returning to the prison. You are placed in belly chains and your hands are cuffed … the strip searches become a difficult task beginning at the six or seven months of pregnancy. By this time, my emotional state was up and down, and most of the time I left the ‘strip room’ in tears from shame and humiliation.”

Most women will only have twenty-four hours with their newborn. After that, they will be taken back to prison and the child placed in foster care, or, if possible, with relatives on the outside.

However, as the number of women in prison continues to rise—according to the Bureau of Justice, the number of incarcerated women is up 71 percent since 1996—some are trying to make life better for the soon-to-be moms.

The Birth Attendants, a nonprofit organization, runs the Prison Doula Project, a program that provides pregnancy, labor, and post-partum doula services and education to women incarcerated at the Washington Correction Center for Women.