Shackling of Female Inmates Part II

Giving Birth With Confidence hits the nail on the head with its commentary on the NYT article about the restraining of inmates during labor and after childbirth:

Doesn’t the NY Times know that almost all women in the US are shackled in labor? The poignant picture of a young mother holding her baby shackled to her bed looked very much like the typical laboring women tethered to electronic fetal monitoring (over 90%) and intravenous lines (almost 90% ) and unable to move freely (71%). In most US hospitals women are confined to bed and unable to walk or change positions easily. Corrections officers say they must "strike a balance between security and the well-being of the pregnant woman and her child". That sounds shockingly like what we hear over and over again from hospital administrators and physicians when women want to give birth normally free from routine interventions and restrictions — the wishes of the mother have to be balanced with the need for "safety".

The same thought had occured to me, too.

Shackling of Female Inmates Part I