“It’s ironic that it’s both shocking and incredibly commonplace,” Jacqueline Robarge says about the shackling of women in labor. Robarge’s group, Power Inside, works with women affected by incarceration, street life, and abuse in Baltimore and is organizing to put a stop to what the American Medical Association has denounced as a barbaric practice. This [...]
When we observe the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade on January 22, we are celebrating a major milestone in women’s health, equality, and status as citizens. At its core, Roe stands for women’s right to make important decisions about our own lives. This momentous Supreme Court decision protects both women’s right to have an [...]
Earlier this month, the Virginia Board of Corrections unanimously approved language to regulate and limit the use of restraints on pregnant women. The regulations must be approved by the Governor in order to go into effect. The Board has jurisdiction over jails. The Virginia Department of Corrections has its own policy, adopted in 2011, regulating [...]
On September 28, 2012, Governor Brown of California signed Assembly Bill 2530 into law, ushering in a new era of legal protection from shackling during pregnancy. Beginning January 1, 2013, the new law will prohibit shackling women around the belly, at the ankles, or with handcuffs behind their back throughout pregnancy. The law also prohibits [...]
People say the third time is the charm. Imprisoned women and their allies in California certainly hope so. “Someday, people will look back and be shocked that California would routinely shackle pregnant women,” says Karen Shain, Policy Director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC). “This bill is a way to lay the groundwork [...]
The Center for Women Policy Studies has published a series of papers called Reproductive Laws for the 21st Century. My contribution is called “She Doesn’t Deserve to be Treated Like This”: Prisons as Sites of Reproductive Injustice, and I’m excited to share it with the MomsRising community. The quotation in the title comes from a [...]
Last month, in a post about developments in legislation to limit the use of restraints on pregnant women, I wrote that Florida might become the next state to say no to shackles in the delivery room… and it has! On April 8, Governor Scott signed the bill to establish uniform rules against shackling women during labor, [...]
Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona signed into law a measure to limit the shackling of pregnant women, bringing the number of states with such laws on the books to 15. The new law applies to state and county prisons and jails, and prohibits shackling during transportation to the hospital to give birth as well as [...]
On many measures of well-being, women in the United States fare better than their counterparts around the world, but when it comes to imprisonment, the situation changes: Of all the women and girls in prison in the world, one in three is confined right here in the United States. With only five percent of the [...]
The New York Times ran a front-page story today about the history of sterilization abuse in the United States, particularly the aggressive program in North Carolina under which some 7,600 people were sterilized – often as teens or young adults and without their knowledge. North Carolina is hardly alone in this sordid history but after [...]
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