Giving Birth Behind Prison Bars : Advocacy Groups Prod States to Consider Alternatives

Rhonda Woods’ baby was due two weeks before her parole date and she didn’t want the child to be born behind bars.

“I never had to leave a baby in the hospital and go back to jail,” says Woods, 23, of Boston, whose 6-month sentence for disorderly conduct kept her at the Massachusetts Prison for Women during much of her pregnancy.

She is one of hundreds of pregnant women or new mothers nationwide who pose a problem for prison and jail officials faced with balancing concerns about the safety of society with those for unborn children.

“Some states are more enlightened than others, but I would say that prison pregnancy is systematically a widespread, very serious problem,” says Ellen Barry, a lawyer with Legal Services for Prisoners With Children, a San Francisco-based national advocacy group for women prisoners.

Series of Lawsuits

Barry and several other prisoner advocates are involved in a spate of lawsuits against correctional systems, pressing for better diets, improved health care and help with custody issues for pregnant inmates.

In California, advocates negotiated a settlement in a class-action lawsuit that accused prison officials of denying pregnant women adequate diets and medical care.

In Connecticut, officials are negotiating a new agreement to replace one that expired last year in a similar lawsuit brought by the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union.

Massachusetts prisoner advocates, who have also filed a suit, are working with state and local leaders to provide alternatives to prison cells for pregnant women accused or convicted of crimes.

Other states have adopted such innovative programs as maternity leaves for pregnant prisoners and have rejuvenated old programs such as prison nurseries.

In some countries, judges are barred from putting pregnant women behind bars. In Italy, for example, a 42-year-old woman avoided serving a 10-month sentence for 10 years by repeatedly getting pregnant.

Drug-Addicted Mothers

Judges in the United States tend to avoid sentencing pregnant women or mothers of small children to time behind bars, legal and correctional officials say. Sometimes, however, the sentence may be imposed out of concern for the baby, whose imprisoned mother often may be a drug addict.

“Actually, what the judge did helped me,” says Janet Jacques, 25, of Worcester, Mass., a pregnant cocaine addict who is serving six months for drug trafficking. “I don’t want to say I like being here, because it’s a prison--but if nothing else, it has helped my baby.”

She said she had been eating better, taking prenatal vitamins regularly and staying off drugs--unlike when she was pregnant and on the streets with her daughter, now 4.

For other pregnant women in prison, however, the outcome has been different.

California Tragedies

The federal class-action lawsuit filed in California in 1985 claims that prison officials failed to respond to some pregnant women’s emergencies and complications.

In one case, the suit alleged, a woman who was bleeding and suffering abdominal cramps was told that her pains were normal. She went into labor and was transferred to Riverside General Hospital, where her son was born and died two hours later.

Another woman who doctors said might need a Caesarean delivery allegedly was taken back to prison when correctional officers decided that she was not dilated enough.

When she returned 7 1/2 hours later, shackled and strapped to a bench in a security van, doctors said it was too late to perform the surgery. The baby suffered oxygen loss and was born with disabilities, the suit alleged.

Suits elsewhere claim that pregnant women were placed in cells or medical units with inmates who had not been examined and may have been carrying contagious illnesses that could affect the developing fetus.

Others allege that drug-addicted prisoners were forced to go through withdrawal “cold turkey.”

Previous Poor Health

Prison officials say they are doing the best they can in overcrowded institutions and that many of the health problems stem from the mothers’ poor medical care before arriving in prison. Most women inmates are poor; many are drug addicts.

“The fact is most inmates have not been exposed to quality medical care before they get to prison,” says Robert Gore, assistant director of the California Department of Corrections, who declined to comment on specific charges in the California lawsuit.

At any given time, 6% of the nation’s female prison population and 10% of the women in county jails may be pregnant, Barry estimates.

Many problems, she says, stem from “glitches and a lot of ill will.” She recalls an inmate whose baby was coming quickly but who had to wait 45 minutes at the prison gate while guards processed paper work.

But security concerns must come first, prison officials say.

‘A Prison First’

“This is a prison first and when we forget that, we’d better find new jobs,” says Martha Rice, program director at the Framingham prison. She recalls one pregnant woman who was placed in maximum security.

“None of us will pretend that maximum security is the optimum place for a pregnant woman,” she says. “But she tried to climb the fence.”

Activists, however, claim that some of the security practices have been unnecessary and dangerous.

In Connecticut, for example, one woman was shackled as she was taken to the hospital to give birth a few years ago.

“They took the leg irons off as the baby was coming out,” says Martha Stone, legal director for the Connecticut ACLU, which fought for a strict policy outlining when leg irons could be used.

Bag Lunches

In Massachusetts, there is only only one prison for women, for offenders ranging from drunk drivers to murderers. Often they must travel across the state for court appearances and may miss hot meals, relying instead on bag lunches that activists claim may not be as nutritious.

At Framingham, where the average sentence for a woman is 4.7 months, about 50 pregnant women go through the institution each year. Last year, 17 gave birth while in prison.

About 3,100 women are serving sentences in the California prison system, the largest in the country, and about 42 are pregnant in any given month. Last year, 120 babies were born to California women prisoners.

Pregnancies behind bars tend to have more complications than those in the community, according to a study by Prison MATCH, a prison mothers advocacy group, done for the California Health Department in June, 1985.

Innocent Victim

“With pregnancy, you have an innocent victim in there who has not been convicted who might lose his life,” says Carolyn McCall, Prison MATCH program director.

Once the baby is born, prison officials and activists agree, comes the big problem: what to do with a baby who needs immediate care but whose mother might have a few more months to serve.

In some parts of the country, they are getting the women into halfway houses.

In Georgia, a maternity reprieve program gives qualified pregnant inmates a 60-day furlough 30 days before their due date so they can deliver their babies outside the prison.

The 7-year-old program also allows women prisoners some time to bond with their infants before the new mother must return to prison. Other pregnant Georgia prisoners, like those in many states, return to their cells 40 to 72 hours after giving birth.

Prison Nurseries

Officials at other prisons are taking another look at prison nurseries, which were once common in women’s reformatories in the United States. The nurseries, places behind the prison fences where women could care for their babies, fell victim to budget cuts and concern about the possible effects of growing up behind bars.

Today, the nation’s only active state prison nursery is at Bedford Hills in New York, where 18 mothers care for their children in rooms on one floor.

“The babies are with their mothers and that’s where they belong,” says Sister Elaine Roulet, who directs the nursery.

The babies sleep in cribs in their mothers’ rooms and play in the nursery during the day. The mothers can win, by good behavior, the privilege of having their children with them, says Joan Koch, a prison nursery spokeswoman.

Some activists, like Betsey Smith, director of Boston-based Social Justice for Women, say the nurseries are “not a vision of the future but a thing of the past” and new solutions must be found.

Options besides nurseries include programs such as the one in Massachusetts that encourage judges to sentence women who would normally serve time at Framingham to perform community work, make restitution to victims and undergo treatment programs.

In addition, the Incarcerated Expectant Mothers Task Force is building a center in Boston to house about a dozen pregnant women who need the structure of a residential program in order to overcome drugs or other problems that led to their arrest.

“Why would you want a child to go into prison when a mom can safely go into a community?” asked Lily Austin of Social Justice for Women.