Some news, and a break

Hello, faithful readers.

I'm going to be taking an extended blogging break - probably 4-6 weeks - and then I will be back with an announcement and a renewed commitment to my blogs. Until then, here are a couple headlines that have popped up recently:

An Arkansas court of appeals says that shackling prisoners during labor is not unconstitutional.

After a six-year absence, nurse-midwives are returning to Austin hospitals.

Midwife-signed birth certificates along the Texas-Mexico border questioned.

If you haven't heard, the AMA has joined ACOG in opposing homebirths. For more on this flap, check out these responses from ICAN, MANA (pdf), Citizens for Midwifery, and Ricki Lake, Jennifer Block & Abby Epstein on the HuffintonPost. Feel free to leave a link to your favorite blog post in the comments.

Breastfeeding and FLDS Mothers

I'm taking a bit of a blogging break this week while we have houseguests, but I wanted to pop in and mention this new blog, FLDS Babies Have Right To Breastmilk:

I am saddened to say that many Texan breastfeeding mothers may be separated from their nursing infants immediately, if not already... While we may not agree or understand the circumstances, I think we need to fight for the right of the children to have the best care and nutrition, which includes breastmilk.

The blog also contains information on breastfeeding and family law/custody issues.

Moms in the Military and in Prison

Interesting blog posts this week; Angela White updates us on U.S. Military Rules for Breastfeeding Mothers at Breastfeeding 123. And Rachel Roth of RH Reality Check asks, "What Do Prisons Have to Do with Reproductive Rights?":

People in prison are the only group in the United States with a constitutional right to medical care. ... In practice, however, securing needed medical care can be daunting, as numerous lawsuits and investigations attest. Women encounter multiple barriers to care - from co-payments they can ill afford to having to convince a guard that they need to see a doctor. Gynecological and obstetric care is often woefully inadequate. In a nationally representative government study, 20 percent of pregnant women in prison reported getting no prenatal care, and 50 percent of pregnant women in jails went without care.

US immigration agency sets new policy after arrest of breast-feeding mother

Wow. I am just speechless. No so much about the arrest, but that the situation was resolved so quickly, with a policy being put into place:

U.S. immigration officials said they have enacted a new policy to show greater consideration for breast-feeding mothers, days after authorities arrested a Honduran woman in Ohio on an immigration violation and separated her from her crying baby.

Sayda Umanzor, 27, admitted to being in the United States illegally when sheriff's deputies and federal agents knocked on the door of a house in Conneaut, Ohio, on Oct. 26.

Umanzor was breast-feeding her 9-month-old daughter, Brittany, at the time, and the baby cried as her parents were led away.

"It was like a piece of me was torn away," Umanzor said Thursday, speaking through an interpreter.

The baby cried incessantly over the next several days as she went without breast milk and Umanzor suffered soreness from engorged breasts.

Greg Palmore, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, said the agency approved Wednesday a new policy to address the needs of breast-feeding mothers.

"It basically ensures that you take humanitarian issues involving nursing moms into consideration," he said Friday. "It also ensures we make contact with state social service agencies to address caregiver issues."

In Umanzor's case, the first jail where she was held did not know it had a nursing mother until Monday, when Lucia Stone, a Spanish-speaking representative of the La Leche League of Ohio, alerted them, said jail commander William Schultz.

Schultz said jail officials then accepted a breast pump and tried to work with local Spanish-speaking mothers to get milk to the baby, but the two sides failed to connect, and the milk had to be thrown out.

Umanzor was transferred to a county jail in Tiffin, Ohio, before immigration lawyer David Leopold secured her release Tuesday night. Leopold argued it was inhumane to hold a nursing mother and unnecessary to jail someone who the ICE knew how to find.

Umanzor was permitted to rejoin her children and was fitted with an ankle bracelet that tracks her whereabouts. She is expected to be deported soon.

Umanzor's husband, Marcus Antonio Bejarano, also an illegal immigrant from Honduras, was taken into custody. A 5-year-old son, David, also has been ordered deported. The couple's 9-month-old baby and a 3-year-old daughter, Alexandra, are U.S. citizens.

Also, see my previous post on the UK addressing this issue last year.

Pregnant Inmates Need Doulas, Too

In honor of Nicole Richie's newly-announced pregnancy - and the fact that she may soon be spending time behind bars for a DUI conviction - I give you this wonderful article by Amie Newman, Pregnant Behind Bars: The Prison Doula Project. Amie interviews Christy Hall, the co-founder and Development Coordinator for The Birth Attendants, which started the project:

"A lot of the issues that are the general issues for pregnant women are magnified in prison. For instance, which provider will you choose for pregnancy and childbirth? In prison, you don't get to choose your provider - not being able to choose who attends your birth is a big deal. Up until recently, in the prison we work in, there was only a male doctor available for labor and delivery. But for many women in prison - a huge number of whom have experienced sexual and domestic violence - having a male provider between your legs is not exactly ideal. Another issue is lack of informed consent - the lack of information and resources around having a healthy pregnancy for these women is huge. They just aren't given any information on pregnancy, their health, their bodies. The lack of access to proper nutrition during pregnancy is a big problem - the pregnant women in the prison we work with get "extra canteen" which means they get like an extra pack of Fritos. Also, the lack of access to health care in prison means that, in general, a health issue is not dealt with until it turns into a huge problem. It's a high-risk population anyway because, for the most part, these women lacked proper health care before coming to prison and being pregnant in prison doesn't change that. Also, there is a much higher rate of cesarean sections for women in prison as compared to women on the outside - mostly for the convenience of medical and prison staff."

The article mentions another organization, The Rebecca Project, which aims to end the practice of shackling pregnant inmates, particularly during labor and delivery, through the enactment of federal legislation.

Also check out this 1997 article by Sheila Kitzinger on the state of pregnant women and mothers in Great Britain.

I'm so behind, I'll never catch up

Here are a couple things on the radar today:

The Australian parliament is debating whether breastfeeding legislators should be given a proxy vote - that is, to have their vote recorded while they are out of the chamber:

The issue of breastfeeding in Parliament made headlines in 2003 when Victorian Labor MP Kirstie Marshall was thrown out of State Parliament for breastfeeding.

Committee members said the debate had resurfaced in light of an increasing number of new mums in the House of Representatives in the past decade.

The committee found only 10 female MPs had given birth while in office - out of a total of about 130 female MPs.

"Women have faced the difficult choice between prioritising their duties as a member with those of being a mother," members said.

Pennsylvania's governor signed that state's breastfeeding legislation. Although breastfeeding advocates would have preferred a stronger bill, it's better than nothing.

A Missouri judge has issued a temporary restraining order blocking implementation of HB 818 which decriminalizes direct-entry midwifery. This bill has caused a lot of controversy. Apparently, it's a circus over there in the Missouri legislature:

A senator secretly attached the provision to a bill intended to make health insurance more accessible to some Missourians. Gov. Matt Blunt signed the bill into law.

Several physician groups sued last Thursday, claiming the midwife language violates the Missouri Constitution by going beyond the bill’s health insurance title and by changing the bill’s original purpose.

The recently passed legislation says that regardless of the current felony statute, anyone with a “tocological certification” — meaning in obstetrics — from a privately accredited group can provide services related to pregnancy.

The title of the bill that passed described it as “relating to health insurance.”

(link)

Alabama has voted down its midwifery bill. Try again next year?

Nancy Ver Steegh of The Family Law Prof Blog reports Problems at Center Where Mothers Serve Prison Terms With Young Children:

"The authorities in California are investigating accusations that poor health care at a center where mothers serve prison terms with their young children led to the stillbirth of a 7-month-old fetus and endangered the lives of several children.

Staff logs, statements by prisoners and interviews with investigators, staff members and prisoners’ families depict a facility where inmates and their children were denied hospital visits and medications, and where no one kept adequate records of accidents involving injuries that included a skull fracture and a broken collarbone."

Giving Birth With Confidence links childbirth issues to a recently-released government list of hospitals where heart patients are most likely to die in Out of the Dark: Transparency and Birth:

Transparency is suddenly a big deal. This government report follows on the heels of efforts in New York City, and communities across the country, to improve the level of transparency related to childbirth. Giving birth in the dark is an apt metaphor for the current state that women find themselves in when attempting to access information about maternity care. The recent NYC public advocates’ report identified that city hospitals although legally mandated to do so, are still failing to provide maternity information. Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum is working tirelessly to insure that hospitals do what they are legally mandated to do…including reporting induction and cesarean rates.

Better get this posted before I get distracted by something else...

Immigration Raids Split Families

Look, I'm a conservative. I suport enforcement of immigration laws. I'm all for building a big, tall, fence. But this goes too far:

This past week in Massachusetts, most of the 361 workers picked up in a raid at a New Bedford leather-goods factory that made vests and backpacks for the U.S. military were women with children, setting off what Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick called a "humanitarian crisis."

Community activists scrambled to locate the children, offer infant-care tips to fathers unfamiliar with warming formula and changing diapers, and gather donations of baby supplies. One baby who was breast-feeding had to be hospitalized for dehydration because her mother remained in detention, authorities said.

Child-care arrangements had to be made for at least 35 youngsters.

Officials of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement division released at least 60 of the workers who were sole caregivers to children, but more than 200 were sent to detention centers in Texas and New Mexico.

Inmate Delivers Baby In Jailhouse Elevator

Inmate Delivers Baby In Jailhouse Elevator: Mother, Baby Transferred To Parkland Hospital

A female inmate housed at the George Allen [Dallas, Texas] Jail Infirmary went into labor early Friday morning and delivered her child before paramedics could arrive. At about 5:25 a.m. the woman, 23-year-old Ada Hernandez, told officers that she was in labor and was escorted to a nurse's station. Medical staff determined that Hernandez needed to be transferred to Parkland Hospital in Dallas to deliver the child. Before the ambulance arrived, Hernandez's labor intensified and she delivered the baby boy in the elevator at 5:43 a.m.

Thankfully, the story has a happy ending - the woman was set to be paroled the same day so she and the baby will be discharged from the hospital.

Breastfeeding baby's mom among those missing in raid

The raid carried out this wek by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials at six Swift plants across the country disrupted families - including separating one breastfeeding baby from his mother.

UK to end separation of detained mothers, babies

Separation of detained mothers from breastfed babies to stop:

Immigration officials are to be ordered to stop separating breastfeeding mothers from their babies in the drive to deport failed asylum seekers after the government was told that the practice flouts UN conventions.

In August, Guardian Unlimited revealed that in at least two cases earlier this year mothers had been detained in immigration and removal centres away from their pre-weaned children.

National Advocates for Pregnant Women

The National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) website (whose stand on some issues I don't happen to agree with) has a blog which, among other things, tracks the arrests of pregnant women (for instance, women who allegedly used drugs while pregnant and are charged with child endangerment). Another one of their issues of note is coerced or court-ordered c-sections and childbirth interventions.

While of course no one thinks it is a good idea for pregnant women to use illegal drugs, it is quite ironic that society and the medical profession frown on drug use, legal or illegal, during pregnancy, but once labor starts we encourage the use, sometimes without informed consent, of all kinds of drugs which have not been proven safe for the unborn baby.

Inmate Shackling

As promised, Wisconsin's Department of Corrections is "close" to finalizing a policy on shackling of pregnant inmates during labor.

Inmate Shackling

The shackling of laboring inmates is once again in the news, this time in Pensylvania:

Sheriff's deputies are shackling some female inmates to the bed during childbirth at Magee-Womens Hospital, officials there said, and the practice has prompted an outcry from advocacy groups.

Sheriff Pete DeFazio said he had no knowledge of any shackling during labor. "That's crazy. It's hard for me to believe. To tell you the truth, I don't believe it."

But Trish Nelson, the hospital's unit director for labor and delivery, said of the 15 to 20 inmates from Allegheny County Jail who give birth every year, about half are restrained by one wrist to the sideboard of the bed by a deputy.

Even worse:

Witold J. Walczak, legal director of the Pittsburgh ACLU, which decries the shackling of women in labor, said many of the women in the county jail are awaiting trial, and don't pose a flight risk. "Most of them are not convicted of anything," he said. Why should they have tighter security than women sentenced to state prisons in various states across the country, he asked.

After the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette discovered the county's policy:

But the procedural manual in the sheriff's office stipulates that any prisoner admitted to the hospital or medical facility must be shackled by leg restraints.

"There are NO EXCEPTIONS to this rule," the manual says.

Sheriff DeFazio lashed out:

"You have to use your brain," Sheriff DeFazio said. "If you don't have a brain, you shouldn't have the job to begin with. You have to use common sense. These people want to be spoon fed. Even a lay person would know why you wouldn't shackle someone in labor. Where is she going to go? If someone is going to escape, she is going to do more injury to the fetus and herself than anyone else. It's crazy. "They are trying to say, 'That is the rule. We have to do it.' But that is stupid. ... They just want to shackle them so they don't have to worry about it, so they can sneak out and have a cigarette."

Hee hee, I like this guy!

Quotes are from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette articles:

Shackling of inmates during childbirth protested
Sheriff bans shackling of inmates during childbirth

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

Shackling of Female Inmates During Childbirth

After the Appleton Post-Crescent ran a series of articles which focused on the shackling of female inmates during labor and immediately after childbirth, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections changed it's policy. Thank God for the free press! Amnesty International USA just released a report, "Abuse of Women in Custody: Sexual Misconduct and Shackling of Pregnant Women" criticizing the practice and mentioning the Wisconsin decision.

Amnesty considers the routine use of restraints on pregnant and inmates in labor "a cruel, inhumane and degrading practice that seldom has any justification in terms of security concerns.

"Amnesty International believes that there is no sound reason for authorities to routinely shackle women in labor or who have just given birth, particularly as most are already under armed guard," the report reads.

Amnesty urges state legislatures to pass laws that ban the use of restraints on pregnant and laboring inmates. Only Illinois and California have passed such legislation.

Wisconsin now joins the five state departments of corrections that have policies banning the use of restraints on pregnant and laboring inmates.

(link)

Bill aims to limit inmate shackling

If I try to comment on this news item, I'll get really angry. So I'll just quote a little:

In California and across the country, female prisoners are routinely shackled for most of labor and immediately after childbirth -- a longstanding practice opposed by a growing number of legislators and even a spokesman for the conservative guards union. A bill introduced by Assemblywoman Sally Lieber that would ban the practice has moved from the Assembly into the Senate.
...
The practice of shackling laboring inmates is defended by the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, although there is no known record of an escape or assault by a prisoner giving birth. All inmates, male and female, who leave state institutions for community hospitals are shackled and guarded by at least one armed correctional officer. That includes the 185 female prisoners on average who give birth each year in California.
...
In general, the women ride to and from the hospital in handcuffs. Inside, they can be shackled to a bed during early labor, a critical period when walking and changing positions assists the progress and comfort of delivery. Per department policy, after giving birth, they have one leg shackled to the bed for the duration of their stay.

Callahan, a first-time offender from Merced, said the shackles were more than emotionally traumatic -- they made her physical recovery more difficult. "You have to be stuck to a bed even though the doctors say you need to get up and walk because your stomach was cut open," she said. "They uncuffed me because a doctor and a nurse had given direct orders for me to walk around."

Between 1998 and 2004, California prisoners gave birth to 1,300 babies, the majority conceived before their mothers' sentencing. Most of those babies went home with relatives or into foster care.

Pregnant inmates get extra milk with meals and the services of a "doula" -- a trained labor coach who runs weekly childbirth preparation classes and provides bedside support during delivery.

According to prison officials, hospital doctors decide when a patient is in "active labor," and that is when restraints are removed. But that stage is ill-defined.

"Active labor means contractions that are regular, forceful and coordinated, and that can go on for 36 hours," said Corey Weinstein, a correctional medical consultant who serves on the board of the San Francisco-based California Prison Focus. Women interviewed by advocacy groups report being restrained until the pushing stage, the last part of active labor, a practice Weinstein described as "barbaric."