Doulas at the County Jail

The program is part of a wave of legislation and programs across the country that advocate for providing higher-quality care for those who are behind bars and their children, whether through building prison nurseries, ending shackling during labor, or considering children during sentencing. The trend aligns with growing research demonstrating that the incarceration of mothers often has a lifelong detrimental and traumatic impact on their children.

While doula care has been shown to help mothers have a positive birth experience, it is not widespread in jails and prisons. A program like Healthy Moms and Babies, combining case advocacy, birth planning, delivery, and postnatal visits, is especially unusual, said Mark Valentine, the director of the Illinois Birth to Three Institute at the Ounce of Prevention Fund, an organization focused on early-childhood development that helps lead the initiative.  

Read: How mass incarceration pushes black children further behind in school

“As birth workers, we want to end the incarceration of pregnant women, but in the meantime it’s critical that we go inside jails and prisons to do this work,” said Erica Gerrity, the executive director of the Minnesota Prison Doula Project, which provides pregnancy and parenting support to incarcerated parents in Minnesota and Alabama prisons and jails.

The population of incarcerated men is declining nationwide, but the same is not true for women. More than 200,000 women are currently incarcerated, an increase of nearly 800 percent since 1980. Yet the correctional system hasn’t adapted to their unique needs. An estimated 12,000 pregnant women are being held in U.S. jails or prisons each year, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, but there is no established federal standard of medical care for them. More than 20 states still allow the shackling of inmates during childbirth. Many women are forced to say goodbye to their newborns and return to jail after 24 hours.  

This summer, one mother, Diana Sanchez, gave birth alone, with no medical supervision or treatment, in her cell at Denver County Jail. She filed a federal lawsuit against Denver, Denver Health Medical Center, and several nurses and deputies, on behalf of herself and her infant, saying her cries for help were ignored during about five hours of labor. (The city and county referred a request for comment to the Denver Sheriff Department, which said it has changed its policies to ensure that pregnant inmates who are in any stage of labor are now transported immediately to the hospital. The Denver Health Medical Center did not reply to a request for comment.)

In the summer of 2017, Karen Padilla-Garcia, a Chicago mother who was seven and a half months pregnant at the time, was pulled over while driving with a broken headlight. During the stop, the Chicago Police Department arrested her on an outstanding warrant for violating probation. The judge that oversaw her case, former Cook County Judge Nicholas Ford, ordered no bond and set a court date for two months later, essentially sentencing Padilla-Garcia to give birth in custody. While awaiting her next court date, she delivered a baby girl.