Labor's Painful Enough; Imagine it in Shackles

No woman should have to go through labor while shackled. Not only is shackling unnecessary, it endangers a woman’s health, dehumanizes her, and is part of a larger system that often denies women fair treatment. Shockingly, this practice is commonly used in Pennsylvania on pregnant female inmates. Even though some prison systems in the state have already banned the practice, it still continues against policy. In Philadelphia five months after policy banning shackling inmates during labor was enacted, Tina Torres, a inmate waiting for her case to be brought before a judge (the case was later dropped), was shackled during her labor. The shackles were only removed once she went into the operating room for a C-section and then only at the doctor’s insistence. Torres is one women among many who have been handcuffed or shackled during their labor, the standard policy in the PA correctional system.

An insensitivity toward prisoners by genera has kept this policy tucked away in prisons and hospital rooms, but as it begins to be publicized and spoken about, some politicians feel a need to do something about it. Pennsylvania State Senator Daylin Leach proposes new legislation that would ban shackling pregnant inmates before, during and immediately after childbirth and labor. He calls the practice a “barbaric relic of the past,” and is attempting to bring a bit of compassion to an insensitive system.

The dehumanizing treatment of pregnant women expands beyond shackling during labor. Women do not usually receive appropriate prenatal care or proper nutrition, a health risk for them and their babies. Tina Torres shared her experiences, accounting how she was wrapped in a chain during her transport from the prison to the hospital and was not given a proper examination by the prison nurse when she thought her water broke, an act of neglect that caused complications in her pregnancy. After returning to the hospital, Tina was put in a unit for the mentally ill, where the prison kept all the new mothers.

The treatment of pregnant women in prison is dehumanizing and restricts their ability to get proper medical care. Senator Leach’s legislation will be an important step in making prison a safe environment to go through pregnancy. If this legislation passes, PA will be the 7^th state to have a ban on using shackles on inmates during labor, an important step in improving women’s rights in a State that continually ranks low in women’s rights nationwide. No opposition to Leach’s proposal has been stated yet, so hopefully we will see this legislation move quickly through State Congress.

http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/news-and-opinion/Giving-Birth-in-PA-Prisons.html