By Char
AdamsNBC News
It was already difficult to get an abortion in prison.
From being forced to pay for transportation to abortion providers to waiting for a court order to undergo the procedure, pregnant people behind bars face severely limited access to abortion.
Now, the situation is even more serious with the end of the landmark Roe v.
Wade.
The Supreme Court overturned the 1973 case that made abortion legal at the federal level, a decision celebrated by anti-abortion activists.
Abortion-rights advocates, however, warn that pregnant people in prisons and jails across the country will be forced to continue unwanted pregnancies, facing harsh prison delivery conditions and sometimes prenatal care. deficient.
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Some had already filed lawsuits to fight for their right to abortion, which was once constitutional.
People incarcerated in states across the country have long had to fight for their right to abortion, according to Rachel Roth, a reproductive justice specialist and scholar at the Center for Women's Health and Human Rights at Suffolk University, in Boston.
For example, in Tennessee, Kei'Choura Cathey alleged that the Maury County Sheriff's Department effectively deprived her of an abortion by denying her transportation and funding after her arrest in July 2015, according to court documents.
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According to WTVF, his only option at the time was to post bail - an exorbitant million dollars - to get out of jail and undergo the procedure.
Sheriff Bucky Rowland then maintained that he had medical personnel examine the situation, and determined that the abortion was "voluntary" and not medically necessary, which meant that Cathey would have to cover the costs related to the procedure.
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She eventually got her bail reduced, but at the time, months later, she was too far along in her pregnancy to have an abortion under state law, WTVF reported.
The case was eventually dismissed as the judge felt Cathey had waited too long to file the lawsuit, according to court records.
It's going to be horrible in states that ban abortion, and even difficult in states that do have abortion rights.
Now many women like Cathey will have no legal recourse if they need an abortion while incarcerated, experts say.
“The fact is it's going to be a big brick wall.
It's going to be horrible in states that ban abortion, and even difficult in states that do have abortion rights," Roth said.
"It's going to take a coordinated effort from all of the abortion funds, bail funds and lawyers to figure out what to do for people who are in the process of being incarcerated or who are already incarcerated."
Access to abortion varies widely from state to state, and even in states that allow abortion, incarcerated people may find their access to the procedure blocked through barriers such as self-pay requirements and the discretion of prison staff, advocates say.
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In a study published last year, a group of researchers from Johns Hopkins University examined more than two dozen prisons and jails and found that the majority of pregnancies in the prisons investigated ended in live births or miscarriages, and that abortion it accounted for 1.3% of pregnancy outcomes.
Abortion rights advocates are concerned that pregnant people in prisons and jails across the country are being forced to continue unwanted pregnancies, facing harsh prison delivery conditions and sometimes poor prenatal care.Dina Rudick / Boston Globe via Getty Images file
The figure was higher in the prisons investigated, where abortion represented 15% of pregnancies.
Experts say few women realize that abortions are possible while incarcerated, and many who do end up fighting tooth and nail to access the procedure.
Now, with the Roe v.
Wade out of the picture, the little access federally incarcerated people had to the family planning process is gone.
This, according to experts, will have serious consequences for pregnant people behind bars.
"Denying incarcerated people access to abortion, and thereby forcing them to carry out pregnancies while incarcerated, subjects them, depending on where they are, to potentially unsafe and harmful conditions," said Carolyn Sufrin, research associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
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"This justifies why we shouldn't incarcerate pregnant women in the first place, if we are recruiting them for conditions where they have no say in their pregnancies and limited abilities to access the care they need," he added.
Many examples of poor calving conditions have emerged in recent years.
Two Broward County, Florida, jail administrators were fired in 2020 after allegedly ignoring a woman who was screaming for help in her cell before giving birth, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel, citing the Public Defender's Office. of Broward.
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The woman told the outlet that she was having contractions and labor pains hours before giving birth, and authorities did not take her to a hospital, as required by law.
Months earlier, Florida had enacted a law to limit the isolation of pregnant people while in detention.
The law was passed after another woman had her baby alone in a jail cell in 2019, the Sentinel reported.
Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony said at the time that a review found the two administrators "grossly failed this agency and this inmate."
Siwatu-Salama Ra, who told our sister network NBC News that she gave birth in an Ann Arbor, Michigan, hospital in front of armed guards, said it's "devastating" to think that more people may go through what she did now than the protection of the judgment of Roe w.
Wade is off the table.
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Ra was nearly seven months pregnant when she was sentenced in 2018 to two years at the Huron Valley Correctional Facility for Women outside Detroit, according to the Detroit Free Press.
The case made national headlines when Ra, then 26 and with no criminal record, was charged with felony assault and firearms charges for brandishing her licensed, unloaded weapon during an argument in Michigan, which is a state concealed carry and "stand your ground".
As organizers worked to free Ra and draw attention to her case, she prepared to give birth inside.
She said that she contracted an infection during her first month at the center and ended up going into premature labor.
At the hospital, authorities chained her to the bed, she said.
Ra said imprisoned pregnant people experience “some of the most inhumane practices the state does to pregnant women” when they are taken out of the facility to give birth.
"No woman or person deserves to give birth in shackles and chains," Ra told NBC News.
“No child should be born into a world surrounded by armed policemen in heavy military uniforms only to be separated from their mother within 24 hours.
This is what happens when the right to abortion is taken away from women and people who are being criminalized in this country."
[The states assert that the abortion ban does not affect in vitro fertilization. But the doctors have doubts]
Center officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News.
Advocates have fought for years to end the practice of shackling pregnant women during childbirth and/or postpartum recovery.
At least 37 states have laws limiting chaining, which experts say makes it harder for doctors to deliver and can lead to injuries during childbirth.
Despite the laws, 82.9% of hospital nurses surveyed in 2018 said the incarcerated pregnant patients they cared for were shackled "sometimes or all the time," according to research published in the Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, & Neonatal Nursing.
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Ra ended up serving about nine months of his sentence after appealing his conviction and eventually accepting a plea deal, he told NBC News.
Ra has said that she pulled the gun on her in self-defense when a woman tried to run her and her mother over with a car, according to the Detroit Free Press.
A Michigan court eventually overturned her felony convictions.
Ra attributes her release to organizers from the Siwatu Freedom Team, and while she is happy to be home with her family, she says she has dedicated her time to advocating for pregnant women in prison.
[Can prosecutors use personal digital information in states where abortion is prohibited?]
“Roe v.
Wade, even that piece of legislation and that sense of protection at the federal level is not even ideal," Ra told NBC News.
“It was something very simple and necessary.
So here we are feeling like we're taking generational steps back, when we should be moving forward," she added.
Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit on behalf of a woman at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women in York who applied for an emergency order to have an abortion.
According to the lawsuit, his request for the procedure was repeatedly denied, and the facility's leadership ended up saying there was a 21-day freeze on large payments to prison accounts, so he would not be able to pay for the procedure through her account - although the woman did not intend to pay for the abortion through her prison account.
Authorities told her that by the time the freeze was lifted, she would have passed the state's 22-week threshold for an abortion, according to the complaint.
Authorities have not addressed the allegations publicly, and officials at the Nebraska Correctional Facility for Women in York did not respond to requests for comment.
The woman was eventually able to have an abortion, despite the freeze, with legal assistance from the ACLU, said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project.
But going forward, the courts may be of no help without the protection of Roe v.
Wade.
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“We may be able to challenge abortion bans in some states under state constitutions, but, in general, your rights are going to stand and fall with the rights of people in the state who are not incarcerated.”
"We may be able to challenge abortion bans in some states under state constitutions, but overall, your rights are going to stand and fall with the rights of people in the state who aren't incarcerated," Kolbi said. -Molinas on the imprisoned population of the country.
“If there is no federal protection, if there is no state constitutional protection and a state makes it illegal, it will probably be the end of it.”
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Kolbi-Molinas said the ACLU has won most of its cases on behalf of people seeking abortions, and has seen severe restrictions, including incarcerated pregnant people being forced to pay compensation for staff members who carry them. transport abortion providers.
These facts illustrate how much is at stake for the incarceration of pregnant people, particularly women of color in jails and prisons, who will be hit the hardest.
“We know that black women are incarcerated at twice the rate of white women,” Sufrin said, adding that both Latina and indigenous women are incarcerated at higher rates than white women.
[Abortion restrictions based on
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stereotypes worry abortion advocates]
“It will most likely disproportionately affect women of color, who are already disproportionately incarcerated.
This will parallel trends across the nation, but it will do so in a clearly punitive way for people who are incarcerated due to the restrictions of their environment and loss of autonomy,” she explained.
In addition to concerns about loss of access and delivery conditions, activists say they are concerned that pregnant people behind bars face further criminalization for the outcomes of their pregnancy.
People have been jailed after miscarriages, and advocates warn that jailed pregnant people will be penalized for miscarriages and self-managed abortions in the future.
"People don't often think of abortion as something related to criminal justice, when often incarcerated women are ground zero for having their rights taken away," explained Samantha Masters, a reproductive justice organizer with advocacy groups. #FreeBlackMamasDMV and Organizing Black.
"Right now we're seeing the penal state expand to include incarcerated mothers in an even larger net," she added.