Female prisoners in England left to give birth alone in their cells

A friend of friend went to prison. She didn't know she was pregnant. She didn't have access to a pregnancy test whilst in prison. Nor was she offered a test when she was admitted.

She did not realise she was pregnant for months. She thought she was just putting on weight cos of the awful food and missed periods because of the stress of the place.

It could have saved her an awful lot of heartache, simply by acknowledging that women get pregnant and they are extremely vulnerable in prison.

Its such a simple thing, but the consequences of biology of women are profound. The issue is more acute in places where there are large numbers of particularly vulnerable women. Top of that list always comes women's prisons.

Women who have been criminalised for minor offences and very often are the result of just trying to get by in a world where they are already invisible.

The Pankhursts were motivated by the political invisibility of women in the workhouse.

Nothing has changed.

Choochoothepanda may mean that the article doesn’t say women literally give birth alone but that there is no midwife in attendance, just prison nursing staff who may not even be trained to recognise the symptoms of early labour, let alone deal with any complications.

Not sure if they’re trying to say that means everything is fine

@MNHQ - a campaign on this would be very much up Mumsnet's street, surely?

I have long had strong feelings about women in prison. I have never really known what to do or think about those feelings because I feel pretty powerless but I want society to care more about these very women, given that some of them will be the most vulnerable and damaged in society. So thank you for this thread and I'm off to look into the charities mentioned now. I am horrified by this story.

Utterly shocking. Can MNHQ campaign about this? It would be a very relevant campaign.

And yes, this:
pregnant women shouldn't be in prison in the first place, unless they've done something very seriously wrong, which the vast majority haven't.

There must be very few cases in which a pregnant woman is truly a danger to society.

I don't even know what to say - I'm astonished, staggered, shocked and incredibly angry all at once.

Did you deliberately lie in the title of your post, or just not read the article?

That's awful. According to the confidential report into maternal mortality one of the maternal deaths last year was of a mother in prison. She comitted suicide and had not had any mental health support.

Duty of care. Duty of care. Duty of care.

Repeat a thousand times.

If there is no data, the problem does not exist in the eyes of the middle classes.

To make a problem go away just make it invisible.

Remind me what totalitarianism looks like?

WTAF is wrong with people. That should be classed as torture

I was naïve enough to think they were sent to prisons with mother and baby units, and they exist

This thread has put me in a rage. I can’t get it out of my head. I’m cross with myself too for being naive enough to think they packed them off to the hospital wing to give birth. I guess the hospital wing doesn’t exist outside of the movies does it?

Ofgs what a way to treat pregnant woman
And they don’t keep statistics
They don’t give 2 flying fucks about women and their babies
Ta for the links to the charities

This is appalling. As Lang says, why is it that they cannot be arsed to collect stats? The inference can only be that women don’t matter enough. I will certainly have a look at the Birth companion website but just urgh. I’m so fucking tired of reading about the endless ways in which women can be fucked over, while entitled men get whatever they “need” as soon as they demand it. It must be absolutely terrifying to be in premature labour, not be believed and be alone in your cell. Even more terrifying to have two completely inexperienced nurses trying to deal with their fuck up.

That was a footling breach - pretty sure that is a huge red flag.

I am shocked they have no birth statistics, no stillbirth statistics and it is not treated as death in prison.

There is always the excuse that labour is unpredictable. If it is that unpredictable, they should have proper measures in place to ensure the safety of the mother and baby. How can they know it is such a vanishingly small risk if they have no records and statistics?

From personal experience, it is hard enough to get the maternity services to react to a month early, fast labour in the outside world. I had DH to get me hospital and advocate for me. My body and brain just wanted to get on with delivering the babies.

It is horrendous.

Www.Prisonreformtrust.co.uk and www.womeninprison.co.uk have some good campaigns to support.

I'm really surprised that no one records the number of pregnant women in prison. Individual prisons must know if they have heavily pregnant women, and I would have thought all prisoners have a medical.

I naively thought that all pregnant women would be housed in specialist units for the safety of the women and child.

www.birthcompanions.org.uk/donating-baby-Items-to-PramDepot

Birth Companions accept donated items (they specify in ‘excellent condition’) I’m past the baby years but if anywhere is going to turn up suitable nursery items for donation it’s Mumsnet!

www.birthcompanions.org.uk

I’ve just googled up this - will read it properly through later (and probably donate too).

Anyone got any other suggestions? Could we ask Mumsnet to do some kind of official awareness/support campaign?

This is awful. Completely shocking.

As an aside, I think women caring about and for women in prison is such a positive thing. I am really heartened to read this on MN.

So many people just don’t give a shit about how prisoners are treated. The reasons women end up in prison are, of course, complex. But often there is coercive control by a man.

I'm pretty amazed that there are no statistics collected for this.

That is shocking. And they don’t even bother to collect statistics? They really don’t give two fucks about women do they?