Nowhere to be seen.
Look at the photo here closely. Does anyone see a sign condemning abortion? Do any of these demonstrators outside the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility last week look like they would be members of that advocacy group for pregnant mothers?
Of course not.
The women in the photo are protesting the treatment of pregnant female convicts inside Bedford Hills who give birth while wearing chains, cuffs and shackles. As they enter labor their legs are restrained and some are shackled to a bed rail. These are not violent offenders. Most are in prison for relatively minor drug offenses.
Some quotes from the Sunday N.Y. Times article by Jim Dwyer on July 12th.
Speaking of a former convict, Venita Pinckney as she left her cell last November on the way to the prison hospital to give birth, “a corrections officer wrapped a chain twice around her waist and handcuffed her to it. Then he covered the handcuffs with a locked black box to further limit her range of motion. Finally, her ankles were shackled.
“I told the officer he’s not supposed to shackle me,” Ms. Pinckney said last week. “He said he was just following procedure.”
Both houses of the N.Y.State legislature passed a bill recently which would bar the shackling of women in labor but it is still awaiting the Governor’s signature.
Another woman at the rally commented on the absurdity of chaining women in labor to prevent any possibility they might use the occasion to attempt escape from the Bedford Hills state prison. They are on the fifth floor of the hospital in scrubs and heavy boots. There are heavily armed guards outside their doors.
One woman said they freed her legs from restraints to allow the baby to exit her womb but as soon as her son was born, the guard shackled her to the bed rail. “I had to push the placenta out with the shackles on. That was the worst,” she said.
Another convict, about to give birth to twins, was cuffed throughout a lengthy C-Section procedure.
And we thought the Abu Ghraib torture could only happen in Iraq, certainly not in the United States of America.
This barbaric treatment has been going on for possibly decades. The article did not say, but the fact that just now, in the year 2009, the state is passing legislation to make it criminal, makes any civilized person froth at the mouth.
However, my anger is directed towards the right wing crazies who did not show up to demonstrate for the signing of this law, post haste. Could it be because most of the pregnant women involved are not white? Or because they are incarcerated?
Why is it that the anti-abortion crowd is most vociferous about the first and second trimesters of pregnancy? As the woman gets closer and closer to giving birth they seem to forget her. What about when the child is two, three, or five years old; when the child is starving because her now ex-convict Mom cannot get a job because of her record. Ever notice that this is when these “holier than thou” advocates completely disappear.
And why did the New York Times.the newspaper of record, bury this extremely important story on page 24? Surely this situation deserved more exposure than the front page article they ran in the same edition on “concrete testing?”
Just asking.
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