How women have been treated in prison has been an endless stream of front page news/ALCU law suits, TV news. Tons of rapes by guards....

Anyway here is a link to a NY Times article on pregnant prisoners. Apparently 5% of all women going to prison are pregnant and in all but two states women’s legs are kept shacked together during the delivery, they are rarely allowed any pain meds. And the kid is taken away afterward. Mortality in that kind of delivery is going to be higher than the general populaces and not to mention painful... why would any women in prison want to deliver a baby? The abortion is much safer for the woman.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/02/national/02shackles.html?ex=1298955600&en=afd1d2d6614d34d6&ei=5088

if the link doesn't work try google

shackling+pregnant+prisoners for a fun list of articles.

(sarcasm for the trolls)

From the special report on prisoner abuse:

International guardians of human rights Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations Special Commission on Violence Against Women, have condemned United States prisons for the existence of prevalent sexual abuse of female inmates by correctional staff. Much of the trouble stems from the fact that many existing prisons in the United States are in violation of international standards of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners which forbid male guards to supervise women�s prisons. A 1997 study of forty states found that, on average, 41 percent of officers at women�s prisons are men.

In many states, male guards have the legal right to touch female inmates anywhere on their bodies (including their breasts and genitals) when conducting searches and to observe them using the toilets and showers. The ultimate authority of male officers over female inmates creates a situation ripe for abuse. The sexual abuse documented in U.S. prisons ranges from sexually suggestive statements, to prurient viewing, to groping, to rape.

According to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, sexual abuse violates both the right to be treated with respect for human dignity and the right to privacy�two rights to which all human beings are entitled. And the rape of an inmate by prison staff is considered, under international law, an act of torture.

John, we don't perform medical experiements on women in prison, we don't (legally) rape them, and we don't forcibly take their kidneys to give to well-deserved transplant patients. So, no, they do not cede control over their bodies upon entering prison.

Actually, they do cede control. They just don't cede ALL control. There are still some boundaries left intact, as you pointed out.

But for the most part, in prison, your body does what it's told to do by somebody else, and if you don't like that, then too bad.

An abortion is a medical procedure, and prisoners have almost no control over their medical treatment.

I had a friend in prison in California who had spinal arthritis and they took away his back brace and didn't allow him any pain medication beyond a Tylenol or two per week.

If they can do that -- if that man didnt have the right to control his medical treatment in prison -- then of course they can deny a pregnant woman an abortion.

It goes with the territory. After all, prison as it is conceived of right now in our society is meant to hurt people. It's not really meant to help them.

Do you think men get to do whatever they want with their bodies when in prison? Not from what I hear.

Especially since pregnancy montoring and delivery costs more than an abortion. Don't they have to go to a hospital for delivery anyway? Or is it just because these women are incarcerated they don't deserve the same level of medical treatment as free mothers and these women can be used as defacto Handmaidens?

Also are these women pregnant before they arrive or do they get pregnant in prison? If they got pregnant in prison, how exactly did that happen, conjugal visits or guard coercion/rape?

Gosh, I know Democrats are afraid to discuss drug policy openly because it's such a divisive and scary issue.

BUT um we have like a half a million American citizens locked in steel cages right now because they chose to put the wrong things into their own bodies.

Isn't this debate over whether a woman owns her own womb in prison a bit surreal when the law pretty much takes the position that her lungs, heart, stomach, brain, blood and urine belong to society at large, whether she's incarcerated or not?

If our society really treated the human body as the private property of the individual, there wouldn't be so many women in prison right now to worry about.

John wrote: "Indeed, if Nixon were to win his appeal, incarcerated women in Missouri would cede control over their bodies upon entering prison."

Isn't that what happens already?

John, we don't perform medical experiements on women in prison, we don't (legally) rape them, and we don't forcibly take their kidneys to give to well-deserved transplant patients. So, no, they do not cede control over their bodies upon entering prison.

"hope of reunification can be a great incentive"

What a great idea! I'm sure little Jane or Johnny is soooo happy to have a mom in jail. While your friends are playing soccer and b-ball, you get to ride the Greyhound to upstateville to visit mom every 3rd Saturday. Might as well book junior's suite at Club Fed right now!

Playing the odds

The vast majority of incarcerated persons (male or female) will eventually get out of prison. They can therefore have a chance of reuniting with a living child rather than having to "start over" with replacing a child who was aborted. And maybe the hope of reunification can be a great "incentive" for a prisoner to get rehabilitated in hopes of getting the kid back.

-- Anonymous

Oh my god, you must be joking?! Why not then force each man and woman prisoner to have a child or to adopt a child while in prison, then send this child to foster homes until the prisoner is released, with no money, no job and no housing, and then have them reunite? This is the worst idea ever...