that prison i was chained in that box i went insane in

On Christmas Eve, Rhodes delivered a stillborn child. When they finally arrived at the correctional medical facility, a doctor sent her to a hospital, where they found her cervix was two centimeters dilated, all of her amniotic fluid had gone, her umbilical cord had stopped pulsing, and her baby-whose blackened foot had pushed through her vagina-had a heartbeat but was deprived of oxygen too long to be saved.

Twenty-eight states have yet to restrict the practice Missouri is one of them.Īnd so during the long drive, a shackled Rhodes continued to beg for a doctor while her fluid turned from clear to green. As of 2015, 22 states had laws against restraining pregnant women, according to the ACLU. Still, anti-shackling measures are on the rise. These are non-enforceable guidelines, however, and therefore little help for the some 12,000 pregnant women incarcerated in our country’s jails and prisons. Marshals Service ( PDF), the Federal Bureau of Prisons ( PDF), the American Correctional Association ( PDF), the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, the United Nations Committee Against Torture, Amnesty International ( PDF), the American Jail Association, the American Psychological Association ( PDF), the Human Rights Project for Girls, and the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges have all introduced standards and positions during the last decade opposing the use of restraints on pregnant women. In a 2011 opinion, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists called the practice “demeaning and rarely necessary.” Shackling pregnant women has been roundly condemned by medical professionals, law enforcement agencies, criminal justice groups, and human-rights advocates. This despite the fact that there has yet to be a single instance of an escape attempt by a woman in labor, according to the Department of Justice’s National Institute of Corrections ( PDF). 23, before leaving for the five-hour drive to Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Vandalia, Missouri, for treatment, guards allegedly shackled Rhodes’s wrists and ankles and attached them to a long chain wrapped around her belly, lest she run away. Guards replied by warning her that they would physically restrain her if she continued. By then, she was in pain and unable to walk, so guards dragged her on a sleeping mat to the cell. 22, Rhodes was to go to a holding cell to await a transfer for medical treatment. When she started bleeding and passing blood clots, another told her to stop faking, according to the complaint.Īccording to the lawsuit, on Dec. As fluid soaked through her pants, one jailer told Rhodes to use a tampon. When her verbal pleas went ignored, she filed an official grievance and left it in her door slot. For the next five days, as she labored alone, Rhodes begged the jail employees for help.

That prison i was chained in that box i went insane in