Senate Begins Investigation Into Abuse Of Pregnant Women in Prison

A tearful Georgia woman told a U.S. Senate subcommittee a harrowing story Wednesday of giving birth while serving a five-year sentence in a state prison.

Jessica Umberger, who now serves as a care navigator for the Policing Alternatives & Diversion Initiative in Atlanta, said she was forced to undergo a Cesarean section against her will because she had had one 18 years earlier. She gave birth to a daughter, Jordan, in August 2018 at the state Department of Corrections’ Helms facility in Atlanta.

“I had only two short hours to hold and look at my baby,” Umberger testified at a hearing held by the Senate Subcommittee on Human Rights, chaired by Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga. “It would be the last time I would see her for about three years.”

Umberger said her troubles didn’t end after she gave birth. After being transferred to Lee Arrendale State Prison in Habersham County, she said she was held in solitary confinement for three weeks after complaining that her cell was unsanitary.

She said she received no medical support while she was in solitary, and her C-section wound became infected.

“I didn’t think I would make it out of there alive,” she said.

The subcommittee launched an investigation last February into abuse of pregnant women in prison. The subcommittee interviewed more than 100 currently or formerly incarcerated women, civil rights lawyers, medical providers, and academics.

“We identified over 200 human rights abuses in state prisons and jails,” Ossoff said at the start of Wednesday’s hearing. “We’ve heard from mothers forced to give birth in prison showers, in hallways, or on dirty cell floors, mothers who gave birth into toilets... These women repeatedly requested and even begged for help, but help came too late if at all.”

Dr. Carolyn Sufrin, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Johns Hopkins University, testified that there are no national statistics available on the incidence of abuse of incarcerated pregnant women.

“If we don’t know how many pregnant women are behind bars, then people think they don’t exist,” she said. “And if people think they don’t exist, it makes it easy for prisons and jails to neglect their health-care needs... Without data, we cannot know the full scope of the problem.”

Sufrin said 41 states have laws on the books prohibiting incarcerated women from being shackled, but prison officials frequently ignore those laws.

“The fact that in 2024, pregnant women are shackled while giving birth, putting them and their babies at risk, is a profound assault on their dignity, safety, and human rights,” she said.

Ossoff said the subcommittee’s investigation remains active and ongoing.

“You cannot say in America that you’re pro-life and allow the horrors that are going on right now in American prisons to continue,” added Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. “Federal action is needed to ensure that we treat incarcerated women with the dignity they deserve.”