Senate probe finds abuse of pregnant women in US prisons

WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) — A Senate subcommittee investigation found hundreds of cases of abuse of pregnant women in prisons across the country.

U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, (D-Ga.), who chairs the Senate Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, said many of these inmates were forced to give birth on cell floors or toilets and placed in solitary confinement after with little or no postpartum care.

“They treated us like animals,” Jessica Umberger told the subcommittee. “To tell the truth, I didn’t think I would make it out of there alive.”

While serving her sentence for racketeering in a Georgia prison, Umberger said she was forced to have her daughter by C-section then faced complications and was kept in solitary confinement for weeks.

“I remember thinking, ‘If people only knew what was happening down here, what would they say or would they even care?'” Umberger asked.

Karine Laboy shared how her daughter, Tianna, was forced to give birth into her cell toilet while serving a sentence for assault in a Connecticut prison. When her newborn was unresponsive, Laboy said the prison staff didn’t answer her daughter’s cries for help.

“They joked that my granddaughter had taken her first swim,” she said.

Laboy said Tianna and her cellmate were able to save the newborn’s life, but Tianna was later shackled to her hospital bed.

“A practice that is not only inhumane but also illegal in the state of Connecticut,” Laboy said.

Ossoff said 41 states have laws prohibiting or restricting the practice of shackling pregnant and postpartum inmates, but his subcommittee found violations in at least 16 of them.

“We will continue to investigate human rights violations against pregnant and postpartum women,” Ossoff said.

Democrats and Republicans on the subcommittee committed to this work, but Dr. Carolyn Sufrin, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, told them it’s complicated because there is still no full national count of pregnancy and births in U.S. prisons and jails.

“If people think they don’t exist, then it makes it easy for prisons and jails to neglect their healthcare needs,” Sufrin said.

Sufrin said there are also no mandatory standards for pregnancy care in the country’s prisons and jails.

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