Massachusetts Senate Votes for Childbirth Without Chains

Seems like I've been following Massachusetts lately...My latest on Truthout looks at the 30 years of organizing and activism that led to the Senate voting unanimously to end shackling pregnant people during labor and delivery as well as to have standards for pregnancy-related care for people behind bars.

On Thursday, March 20, the Massachusetts Senate unanimously passed S2012, a bill that limits the shackling of pregnant prisoners during labor and delivery. The bill also requires minimum standards of medical care for pregnant women in jail and prison. "There is absolutely no reason to shackle pregnant women," Senator Karen Spilka, the bill's sponsor, told Truthout hours before the Senate vote. "It's unsafe, inhumane and barbaric."

Spilka was not the only Massachusetts lawmaker who thought so. The month before, on February 20, Governor Deval Patrick announced emergency regulations prohibiting the shackling of pregnant women in Massachusetts jails and prisons while they are in their second trimester, as well as when they are in labor, delivery and postpartum recovery...

Both the bill's passage in the Senate and the governor's regulations come after years of education and advocacy by reproductive justice advocates, prisoner rights activists and currently and formerly incarcerated women. In the past, bills prohibiting shackling during childbirth have been introduced in the House and assigned to the Judiciary Committee where no further action has been taken. This year, however, Senator Spilka also introduced her bill, which was assigned to the Public Safety Committee. After a December 2012 hearing, which included testimony from prison justice advocates, reproductive rights advocates and prison birth doulas, the Committee's Vice Chair stated, "It just shocks me [that] this still happens in this day and age."

For a synopsis of those 30 years of organizing leading to this vote, see http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/22...