Imagine being incarcerated and living in a penitentiary with hundreds of other inmates. These inmates have committed various crimes which range from misdemeanors to felonies. Imagine not having any privacy and being monitored constantly while sleeping, eating and using the bathroom. Just as a child, you have to do what people above you tell you when they tell you, or face the consequences. Being on a schedule all day, you’ll have to wake up at a certain time and go to bed at a certain time. You eat when you’re told to eat, or you don’t eat at all. You have no say in what you eat; there aren’t any choices. At any time and any place, you can be harassed, abused, or beat up by other inmates, and sometimes you don’t have a choice except to just take their harsh treatment and brush it off. Unless it’s a fight going on, the prison guards most likely won’t do anything to help you. Prison sounds like a very arduous, place to live doesn’t it? Imagine being pregnant and incarcerated; that has to be an onerous place to live while pregnant. Many people find conditions such as these to be harsh for women who are expecting a child, and believe that women who are incarcerated while pregnant should not have to go to prison. There should be safe and effective alternatives for women who are pregnant, where they are free from the dangers of shackling, other inmates, and the mistreatment that they are often subject to, but serve the time for their crime.
.
The United States has the largest population of female prisoners. Roughly four to seven percent of women enter prison pregnant each year. Some of these women don’t know that they are pregnant until two weeks after their incarceration when they are forced to have a mandatory health evaluation, i...
... middle of paper ...
...to him like he asked and then went back to lay down. But what the woman didn’t know was that this “so called friend” was actually an undercover cop who was recording the entire thing with a hidden camera. A few days later she was arrested and showed the tape before being charged as an accomplice to selling drugs. This woman didn’t even know what was in the bag or that her boyfriend was selling drugs in her house, but she was sent to prison to serve time. The sad part is, her boyfriend who actually sold the drugs was never arrested, and he walked free from the whole thing. This woman was a nonviolent first time offender and unnecessarily sent to prison. For cases such as these, women should not have to be imprisoned. This is one of those times where an alternative should have been more reasonable, if and only if, the judge found that the woman just has to serve time.
Two-thirds of infants die during the first month of life due to low birth weight (Lia-Hoagberg et al, 1990). One reason for this outcome is primarily due to difficulties in accessing prenatal care. Prenatal health care encompasses the health of women in both pre and post childbearing years and provides the support for a healthy lifestyle for the mother and fetus and/or infant. This form of care plays an important role in the prevention of poor birth outcomes, such as prematurity, low birth weight and infant mortality, where education, risk assessment, treatment of complications, and monitoring of fetus development are vital (McKenzie, Pinger,& Kotecki, 2012). Although every woman is recommended to receive prenatal health care, low-income and disadvantaged minority women do not seek care due to structural and individual barriers.
The video Prison Moms was eye opening to the plight of women while pregnant as members of a correctional institution. This documentary focused on Pennsylvania based programs at Riverside correctional facility. The 2009 sentencing project study found that one out of every forty-three kids has a parent in prison and that sixty-five thousand and six hundred mothers were incarcerated as of 2007. The program offers a full-time staff Monday through Friday that work specifically with pregnant inmates and mother within the prison population with children under the age of three. This staff also works with the mother and the caregiver of the child outside of the corrections facility to keep the family unit “together”. The video also stated that eighty
...ed girls, in a written message that was smuggled out of the prison during a visit with her mother, wrote,None of the human rights organizations have visited us, and the prison administration did not sign off on a medical examination for us, following repeated attacks on us. They only conducted pregnancy tests." The women in these prisons are being attacked sexually, physically, and mentally. They are not getting any help from any doctors, they are being dehumanized. Yet the justice system which is supposed to protect them from these exact attacks is doing nothing. They are allowing these women to be attacked and not punishing the people who are supposed to keep them safe while they are serving their sentences. Instead of helping the women the justice system is blatantly ignoring the infections and injuries that are deadly that the women sustained from the attacks.
All she did was not tell the cops anything, her boyfriend was the one that stole the drugs. I believe they should revaluate her case and change the amount of time she has to be in prison.
Clark, A. (2009, July 6). Giving Birth in Chains: The Shackling of Incarcerated Women During Labor and Delivery. Retrieved April 2014
As a woman, the experience of pregnancy and preparing to bring a new life into this world is, in general, an incredibly exciting time, unless of course, you are one of thousands of women incarcerated in the United States, serving prison time for felony convictions.
Being a mother is a lifelong job that requires copious time, energy, and money. There are myriad different reasons in which a woman would consider getting an abortion. The decision is often tragic and painful for the mother. It is one of the biggest choices a woman will make. Many people have strong beliefs about abortion, and if a mother makes a decision that they do not agree with they sometimes turn against the mother, and enkindle egregious feelings about their decision for the rest of their life. Indeed a woman may not get an abortion for selfish reasons or out of convenience, but out of a desire to protect certain important values such as her own health or a decent standard of living for the other members of the family. Additional intentions for having abortion include rape, financial difficulties, obligation by family members, or danger to the baby’s health (Roleff
There is little time for raising the children. It takes two full time jobs just to make ends meet, and that barely happens. A third, part time job might be necessary to provide heat during the winter months. The third child will be here by then, and there’s little that can be done to provide any resemblance of a comfortable life. Maybe mistakes were made in the past, and now another person has to suffer because of those mistakes. This wouldn’t be necessary if only the pregnancy could be aborted. Today, that’s a choice women can legally make, but if abortion was made illegal, a new baby would come into the world who would unlikely ever know anything except suffering.” Today in our society every women have the right to choice to an abortion, but if any woman realize that is taking away a life to an innocent human that do not anything yet will make them feel bad. Furthermore, another reason that people believe is that abortion should be legalized because everyone believe that any woman should have the chance to make their own decisions in their life, especially when regarding such a personal subject as abortions. Also, the government should not have control over a woman 's body or a family 's decision because they only can decide if they having the baby or they going to
There have been many questions raised if the nurseries programs were fair but “the number of women incarcerated in state prisons in the United States (US) has dramatically increased in the past 20 years, and 70% of these women are the mothers of minor children, as of the last Bureau of Justice estimates” (Mumola, 2000). “Allowing women to parent their children within correctional facilities in the US may be “one of the most controversial debates surrounding the imprisonment of women” (Bel...
A pregnant women committed a crime and must serve a 10 ten prison sentence, she is at a crossroads with what to do with the baby, keep it in jail with her or let it die on the streets? The choice is obvious. Mothers should be able to have their babies with them in prison due to a variety of reasons. Having their babies with them in prison helps with the early mother-child bonding that is crucial for the lifelong success of the child, it helps the mother become a better person while reducing the recidivism rate, and because the mothers can raise their children in a safer environment compared to the streets with no assistance.
Spielman, B. (1995). [Review of Women and prenatal testing]. Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 23, 199-201.
Thomson recognizes that this thought experiment has a very limited application – specifically to those instances where a pregnancy is the result of coercion or violence. In the sec...
It is saddening to see humans of the female gender, who find themselves in a situation that requires introducing a new life into the world; to abort such a precious gift. Many may wonder how these poor, innocent, unborn children are then discarded after the abortion procedure. One cannot fathom the reason of these gruesome murders that happens within these medical facilities. Babies are disposed in the red waste bins of these facilities, and later incinerated. Some may either be flushed down garbage disposals or even be sold off for research purposes. The issue of abortion is not just a social one, but also a human rights issue among the unborn children. I believe if the human rights of these children has been violated, then all other rights of humans are certainly meaningless.
The other person was taken to the hospital and then asks the women have you ever press charges against your husband? She just side and did not realized that things like that can happen to innocent people. The other women that filed charges had her husband were sent to jail. The first case she pushed but to me it wasn’t hard to prove in cases like that. The reaction is that why couldn’t they look at all bruises that was on each of their body.
Having children is one of the most amazing things in the world but some children are created with the wrong idea behind them. RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network) reports that there is “on the average of 237,868 people, ages 12 or older that have become victims of rape and sexual assault yearly.” Some of these rape and sexual assault crimes result in women becoming pregnant with a baby that they had not planned on. Women who become pregnant due to rape and sexual assault are usually very eager to get rid of their baby due to the fact that their child would possibly be a reminder of a part in their life that they would not like to recall.