Pregnant women in prison could see health care improve under House legislation
Pregnant inmates face unique challenges which congressional lawmakers say have not been adequately documented or addressed, so the House plans to vote on legislation aimed at improving their prison medical care.
The bill will establish minimum standards of health care for pregnant women, fetuses and babies in federal prisons. And it would require the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics to compile data on the status of women in prisons all over the country.
Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., a chief sponsor of the bill, says it addresses flaws in a system that was not created for women in the first place.
“Our prison system was not created with women in mind and as a result continually fails to provide basic necessities to tens of thousands of individuals who are incarcerated every single day,” said Bass, chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus.
The House Judiciary Committee approved the bill this week by voice vote, and the full House will now consider it. Its fate in the Senate is unclear.
At its bill-writing session, Bass told stories of women who have delivered babies in isolation, women who give birth while in physical restraints, and women who aren’t allowed to even touch their child after giving birth.
The bill would require the Bureau of Justice Statistics to collect data on women’s physical and mental health during their pregnancy and postpartum period in federal, state, local and tribal correctional facilities.
It will also ban physical restraints and solitary confinement on federal inmates who are pregnant or have given birth within the last eight weeks.
States that have laws addressing the treatment of incarcerated women that the Attorney General determines meets or exceeds federal standards will be able to apply for federal funding.
A 2019 study by Johns Hopkins Medicine examined the pregnancy outcomes in 22 federal and state prisons and found more than 90% of pregnancies ended in live births.
The issues, according to the authors of the study, is that there are no mandatory standards for prenatal and pregnancy care in detention facilities. As a result, the access to and quality of reproductive healthcare varies from state to state.
The most recent data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics was collected almost 20 years ago. Rep. Bass says the data collection is a key part of the bill because “we can’t address a problem for which we don’t have the proper information.”
A 2018 report from the Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit legal advocacy group that provides representation to poor people in prison, found the incarceration rate of women rose 700% from just a little over 26,000 incarcerated women in 1980 to almost 214,000 in 2016.
The bill has received bipartisan support and cosponsors say it is the best way to ensure pregnant women and their babies receive the proper care and support.
“It is important that we protect life and provide a safe environment for the rising number of incarcerated expectant mothers and their babies. I’m hopeful this bill will improve conditions for expectant mothers,” Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Arizona, a cosponsor of the bill, said in a statement.
This story was originally published September 17, 2020 at 9:36 AM.