Well, maybe in Uzbekistan also. I’m not sure, but I’m willing to bet that leg shackles on women prisoners while they are giving birth is something the Uzbeki dictator might also approve of:
Shawanna Nelson, a prisoner at the McPherson Unit in Newport, Ark., had been in labor for more than 12 hours when she arrived at Newport Hospital on Sept. 20, 2003. Ms. Nelson, whose legs were shackled together and who had been given nothing stronger than Tylenol all day, begged, according to court papers, to have the shackles removed.
Though her doctor and two nurses joined in the request, her lawsuit says, the guard in charge of her refused.
“She was shackled all through labor,” said Ms. Nelson’s lawyer, Cathleen V. Compton. “The doctor who was delivering the baby made them remove the shackles for the actual delivery at the very end.”
Just a fluke “red state” occurence you might suppose. But no. Not at all. What’s really shocking is that this obcenity is hardly limited to Arkansas. In fact, it’s widespread, with only 2 states (California and Illinois) having laws that officially proscribe this barbaric practice, (though five more have Corrections Department policies in place that prohibit shackles during labor).
For more information on this story, read on . . .
Twenty-three state corrections departments, along with the federal Bureau of Prisons, have policies that expressly allow restraints during labor, according to a report by Amnesty International U.S.A. on Wednesday.
The corrections departments of five states, including Connecticut, and the District of Columbia, the report found, prohibit the practice. The remaining states do not have laws or formal policies, although some corrections departments told the group that they did not use restraints as a matter of informal practice.
That’s pretty sickening when you think about it. And what could possibly justify this policy? Well, believe it or not, the fear that pregnant women in labor are a “flight risk.”
“Though these are pregnant women,” said Dina Tyler, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Corrections, “they are still convicted felons, and sometimes violent in nature. There have been instances when we’ve had a female inmate try to hurt hospital staff during delivery.”
[…]Many states justify restraints because the prisoners remain escape risks, though there have apparently been no instances of escape attempts by women in labor.
“You can’t convince me that it’s ever really happened,” Ms. Newell said. “You certainly wouldn’t get far.”
Now, I’ve never been in labor (obviously) but I did help my wife with the delivery of our two children, and I cannot imagine how anyone could think that shackling a woman’s legs together while she’s having contractions could be a safe procedure, for either the mother or her child. And, in fact, it isn’t:
Ms. Nelson was serving time for identity fraud and writing bad checks when she gave birth at age 30. She weighed a little more than 100 pounds, and her baby, it turned out, weighed nine and a half pounds.
The experience of giving birth without anesthesia while largely immobilized has left her with lasting back pain and damage to her sciatic nerve, according to her lawsuit against prison officials and a private company, Correctional Medical Services
Bush’s America. Where we shackle pregnant women convicted for identity theft, because, even while in labor they are just so, so dangerous. God only knows what she might have done, this 100 pound woman waddling away from the hospital while in the middle of delivering her 9 1/2 lb. child. The consequences are just too horrible to imagine.
