Coming up Saturday morning, Shondell Newsome with the group Small Business for America's Future talks about the state of small businesses in the U.S.
And then a discussion on how education policy could change under the incoming Trump administration with Ed Choice, President and CEO Robert Endlow.
Join in the conversation live at 7 Eastern Saturday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN now, or online at cspan.org.
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Sunday on Q&A, Jokin Jack Werfel, author of My Two Lives, talks about surviving Nazi Germany as a half-Jewish member of the Hitler Youth, the steps taken to conceal his identity.
and the day his Jewish mother was arrested by the Gestapo.
As we got out of the subway, which was right around the corner from where my mother lived, where we lived with my mother, I saw all kinds of Gestapo and SS cars in front of the building.
Now, this was a large building.
There were many families in there.
And my brother and I decided that better than going in and going there with all these SS and Gestapo people, we waited on the corner and watched it from there.
And we decided to ask our mother as to why these cars were there and what the Gestapo was doing there once they were to leave.
We would go home and ask our mother.
Well, after a while, all of a sudden, to our surprise, it was my mother.
They were bringing out of the building, put her in one of the Gestapo cars, and they took her away.
Jack Werfel with his book, My Two Lives, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA.
You can listen to QA and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app.
A former inmate who gave birth while incarcerated testified at a Senate hearing on the mistreatment of pregnant women in prisons.
The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law also heard from the mother of an inmate who gave birth to a newborn in a prison toilet bowl.
This hour, 45-minute long hearing was chaired by Georgia Senator John Ossoff.
The Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law will come to order.
Welcome all, in particular to our witnesses.
And before we begin, I want to take a moment to acknowledge your bravery and your courage in testifying today.
We appreciate what it takes for you to be here, addressing a very difficult and personal subject in a public forum like this.
And I do want to advise those in attendance and those tuned in across the nation that this is a difficult subject matter, and viewer and listener discretion is advised for that reason.
In February of this year, as chair of the Human Rights Subcommittee, I launched an investigation into state prison and jail conditions for pregnant and postpartum women.
The subcommittee conducted site visits and interviewed more than 100 formerly and currently incarcerated women, civil rights and criminal defense attorneys, medical providers, advocates, doulas, and academics.
Our staff also reviewed federal lawsuits and relevant public reports from the last six years, finding what I believe to be significant and pervasive abuse and mistreatment of pregnant and postpartum women behind bars.
The subcommittee has identified more than 200 reported human rights abuses against pregnant and postpartum women at state prisons and jails nationwide.
We've heard from mothers forced to give birth in prison showers, hallways, or on dirty cell floors.
Mothers who gave birth into toilets after being told they were not in labor and that they should, quote, lie down and go back to their cells.
Mothers who gave birth in their underwear after prison staff refused to help them and told them instead, quote, don't have that baby.
And quote, you're not even pregnant.
In all cases we reviewed, these women repeatedly requested and even begged for help.
But help came too late, if at all, and in several cases, their babies did not survive.
We heard from mothers whose infants were immediately taken away from them.
The subcommittee received numerous reports that generally infants born in a facility are taken from their mothers within one day of birth, and that their mothers often went months and sometimes even years without knowing what happened to their children.
We heard from postpartum mothers who were placed in solitary confinement within days of giving birth without any medical care or mental health support.
We heard from women who were shackled around their stomachs, wrists, and feet during pregnancy and birth, reportedly causing injuries and miscarriages.
While 41 U.S. states reportedly have laws that prohibit or restrict such shackling, the subcommittee identified apparent violations in at least 16 of these states.
The rights of women to humane prison conditions and adequate health care are recognized under the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the United Nations Convention Against Torture, the Nelson Mandela Rules, and the Bangkok Rules, among other international standards.
The testimony and evidence we'll hear today, however, presents a shocking and horrifying picture of pervasive abuse and mistreatment of pregnant women in American prisons and jails.
The subcommittee will hear testimony from a woman who endured appalling conditions while pregnant and postpartum, including weeks of solitary confinement within days of giving birth.
The subcommittee will also hear testimony from a mother of a woman who gave birth into a prison toilet after her pleas for medical attention were ignored by prison staff.
Again, I want to thank you both sincerely for your courage in sharing what you and your families have experienced.
We will also hear from an OBGYN physician who can speak to the inhumane conditions faced by pregnant incarcerated women around the country and the tragic consequences for their health and safety.
This is an active and ongoing inquiry by the subcommittee.
We will continue to investigate human rights violations against pregnant and postpartum women in Georgia's prisons and jails and nationwide.
I'd like to thank my Senate colleagues who have worked tirelessly to improve the conditions of our prisons and jails, including Chair Durbin, Senator Booker, and Senator Blumenthal.
I'm grateful that we have all three distinguished senators with us here this afternoon.
And I'd like to yield now to Chair Durbin for his opening remarks.
I don't want to postpone the actual testimony, but this is a continuing challenge.
We all know that famous quote which said basically you can measure the degree of civilization in the country by the way they treat people in prison.
My feeling is that every member of Congress, House, and Senate should visit a prison at least once every two years.
We end up passing laws that relegate people to lives in these institutions.
We should know what's actually going on.
Senator Osoff, you've been a real leader on this, and I want to thank you and Senator Booker and Senator Blumenthal and Senator Klobuchar.
The whole Democratic side of the committee has paid special attention to this issue.
Thank you for this hearing today.
Thank you, Chair Durbin.
Senator Booker, chair of the crime subcommittee, for your opening remarks, please.
Thanks so much, Chairman Ossoff, and I want to thank the chairman of the full committee who's here as well, who's been a partner on so many of these issues.
It's frustrating to me because our society is turning a blind eye to the treatment and experience of incarcerated individuals.
It's stunning the things that have been allowed to happen in our prisons and jails throughout our country that do not align with our values and often put us as outliers in the developed world for how people are treated behind bars.
We are especially culpable for overlooking the complex challenges and barriers faced by pregnant and postpartum women while incarcerated.
I came to this issue many years ago from honestly a place of ignorance.
I've worked since I was a law student in prisons and have been visiting prisons regularly since then, trying to reform our carculism and going to jails and prisons.
But one day it was pointed out to me by a woman, formerly incarcerated woman, that I had never ever in my 20 years of visiting prisons been to a facility specifically for women, so I visited.
When I visited that facility, I was shaken to my core.
I sat down with women who began to tell me stories that were unacceptable.
Things like making their own tampon so that they could save money to be able to call their children when those calls were charged in usury rates.
In particular, the facility I visited shook me because I'll never forget this tough warden looking at me when I asked her how many of the women here were survivors of sexual violence, and she said 95% of the women are survivors of sexual violence.
The United States, this land of the free, is home to one out of every three incarcerated women worldwide.
In the past four decades, the number of incarcerated women in the United States has increased by a staggering 585%, An issue that directly compounds this is the fact that the United States has already has, for all women, the highest maternal mortality rate amongst all high-income nations.
But this problem is obviously worse for pregnant women in our prisons.
Studies show that they have a higher likelihood than non-incarcerated pregnant women of experiencing adverse maternal health outcomes like maternal mortality and morbidity.
This and the realities that exist in our system right now are unacceptable.
Every human being, especially those in the United States, should have quality health care.
That right does not disappear when we go behind prison walls.
This is why when I first became a senator a decade ago, I fought to improve the treatment of incarcerated women who are pregnant.
Back in 2017, I introduced the Dignity for Incarcerated Women Act with a group of extraordinary champions from Elizabeth Warren to then Senator Kamala Harris.
We fought for and secured the addition of a critical piece of legislation in the First STEP Act that prohibits the shackling of pregnant women in federal custody, except in certain limited cases.
And more recently, I teamed up with Representative Ayana Presley, Lauren Underwood, and Alma Adams and created the Justice for Incarcerated Moms Act.
This bill will incentivize states to follow our lead in the First Step Act and end the practice of shackling pregnant women once and for all.
It'll provide funding for pregnant and postpartum women who are incarcerated to access doulas, mental health counseling, healthy food and nutrition education, maternal infant bonding opportunities, and more to support a healthy pregnancy and birth.
This bill is an integral piece of the momnibus legislation I introduced with Representatives Lauren Underwood and Alma Adams that would address every leading cause of maternal death in the United States and make critical investments in addressing the social determinants of health and disparities in mental health care and outcomes.
As today's hearing will illustrate in painful, wretched realities, pregnant women in prisons are subject to grave injustices.
What gives me hope is that more than 80% of pregnant-related deaths are preventable.
We have the resources to save the lives of pregnant women and end the maternal health crisis and help for the birth of healthy children.
You cannot say in America that you're pro-life and allow the horrors that are going on right now in America's prisons to continue.
Federal action is needed to ensure that we treat incarcerated women with the dignity they deserve.
Action is needed to save lives.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Senator Booker.
I'll now introduce our witnesses and then they will be sworn in.
Thank you again for joining us today.
Ms. Jessica Umberger is a mother and care navigator at the Policing Alternatives and Diversion Initiative.
She survived pregnancy, giving birth, and postpartum recovery while incarcerated in our home state of Georgia.
Ms. Corinne LeBoy is the mother of Tiana LeBoy, who gave birth inside the York Correctional Facility in Niantic, Connecticut.
And Dr. Carolyn Sufran is an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, an associate professor of health, behavior, and society at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a fellow at the American College of Obstetricians and gynecologists.
If you would all please rise and raise your right hand, do you solemnly swear that the testimony you're about to give before the subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Let the record reflect all witnesses answered in the affirmative.
You may take your seats.
And when you're ready, Ms. Umberger, we'll begin with your opening statement.
Just a friendly reminder to the witnesses to make sure that your microphones are active when you're speaking and don't feel pressed for time.
We want to hear from you.
Ms. Umburger, when you're ready, please.
Okay.
Good morning.
Good afternoon now.
First, I would like to thank you all for allowing me this time to speak in this space.
My name is Jessica Drew Umberger.
I am a mother and proudly working at Policing Alternatives and Diversions Initiative, also known as PAD, in Atlanta, Georgia.
In 2017 and 2018, I was pregnant while serving a five-year sentence.
I was held initially at Helms Facility, what they call the medical facility for the Georgia Department of Corrections.
Those nine months pregnant in prison and everything that followed was the worst experience of my entire life.
At Helms, they treated us like animals.
I was there for nine months and I saw several babies born in the hallway when I was there.
I remember women screaming for help and praying out loud for medical attention.
All of us were scared, stressed, and vulnerable.
I remember a woman in the room very next to mine screamed, help, I'm having my baby.
The nurse on duty shouted down the hallway, shut up, you will see a doctor in the morning.
The woman ended up giving birth on the bathroom floor.
Sometimes people got lucky and the doctor would get there just in time to catch the baby.
I remember praying, God, please don't let that be me.
The officers played mean tricks by announcing at 4 a.m., wake up, you've got breakfast from Waffle House.
We would rush down the same hallway only to find there wasn't any Waffle House.
They'd laugh at our confusion and disappointment.
They also didn't properly feed us at all.
Our food consisted of watered-down greens and soy patties, which left us all very hungry.
This food tasted awful, and the cheese bread, which was the extra food we got because we were pregnant, was so bad, I still can't get the taste out of my mouth.
I was most scared the morning I was to give birth.
I was told by prison staff that because I had a C-section 18 years prior, it was Georgia Department of Corrections policy that I had to have another one.
Even though I told them I wanted to have a vaginal birth, they told me it was not allowed.
It is my strong belief that the prison staff wanted me to have a C-section to fit my birth into their hospital transport schedule.
God had other plans.
I ended up with preeclampsia and had to be rushed to a hospital.
This is where my trauma turned for the worse.
I was dropped off with officers I did not know at a hospital and was in a surgery room surrounded by strangers, doctors who never examined me, and nurses I'd never met.
When I explained to the doctor that I was told I had to have a C-section but that I wanted a natural birth, the doctor said it sounded like coercion to him.
My beautiful Jordan was born August 15th, 2018.
I had only two short hours to hold and look at my baby.
This would be the last time I would see her for a few years, three years, about three years.
We were separated.
She was taken to the neonatal unit and I was taken to a dark basement where they kept the incarcerated people.
In the basement, I was transferred from the rolling bed to a stationary bed.
I had to be helped by a couple of nurses as I could not feel my legs.
I remember the nurse asking the male sergeant to step out so she could clean me up.
And he replied, I can't do that, ma'am.
She looked me in the eyes and quietly said, She said, I'm sorry, I proceeded to clean my private areas while the male sergeant watched.
The next few days, I remember random men looking every hour into that small window of the locked door.
I remember seeing feet of people walking by my caged window and thinking, if people only knew what was happening down here, what would they say or would they even care?
I was transported to Learingdale State Prison three days after giving birth.
I asked if I could see my baby and tell her goodbye, but the transporting officer told me it would be in my best interest not to say goodbye.
They wouldn't even provide an update on how she was doing.
Once I arrived at Learingdale, I was placed in the infirmary in a room with a woman who had MRSA.
This made me very uneasy as I had a large open wound in my abdomen.
I asked for cleaning products and was given a large open, I mean, I'm sorry, I was given, asked for cleaning products and when I was giving a thumbnail size amount of bleach in a pill cup.
I was not given my property and therefore could not shower properly.
I had been wearing the same underwear from the day I had gave birth and now what didn't have a change.
When I would ask for pads, I was given one, maybe two if I was lucky.
I must have complained too much about the room being unsanitary because I was told to grab my bedding and I then I was taken to lockdown where I was left for three weeks.
I was put in solitary when my baby was only five days old.
In solitary confinement, I had no medical support.
The staples in my stomach from my C-section had not dissolved and there was no air conditioner.
Hot, laying there in August trying to heal, my C-section wound became infected.
I didn't know how I was going to make it.
To tell the truth, I didn't think I would make it out of their life.
No one ever checked on my mental health postpartum.
I was never screened for postpartum depression.
And my six-week checkup consisted of a doctor asking, How are you?
And I said, fine.
He said, okay, good.
When I was finally sent back to the general population, I spent a couple of weeks in the cell in a cell where I had to sleep on the floor because I physically could not climb on that top bunk.
I came home in April of 2022, and it was clear that my kids had been serving time too.
They'd had five homes during their three years in foster care, and they were traumatized.
I was desperate to stitch my family back together, but finding housing, something, finding housing, something that was necessary if I was going to get my kids out of foster care, was difficult with the criminal record.
I must have applied for over 30 apartments and I repeatedly was repeatedly denied before I finally purchased a home.
I had a mission to get a home and get my children back.
I achieved my mission.
Today we live together and we are all healing.
But it's so clear that my kids were punished along with me.
They never had been roller skating, never learned how to ride a bike or swim.
They'd tell me they'd sit in a room all day in foster care.
No opportunities, no activities.
Nobody took them to the movies.
I served my time, but my children and I will never fully be finished with my sentence.
I am hopeful that my testimony will make a difference and that we might work together on alternatives that heal instead of harm families.
Thank you so much, Ms. Umberger.
Ms. LaBoye, when you're ready.
Good afternoon, everyone.
And thank you for the opportunity to address you today.
My name is Corine LeBoy.
I reside in Dubrane, Connecticut.
My daughter has been incarcerated at your correctional institute in Connecticut since August 2017.
My daughter was around six weeks pregnant when she entered your correctional.
I stand before you today as a mother, as a grandmother, to tell you about our family's experience.
From the moment my daughter entered your correctional, her pregnancy added a layer of fear and uncertainty to our lives.
Communication with her was very restricted, and I was denied contact for several weeks.
When I finally heard her voice, she expressed a lot of distress and fear of being alone.
She told me about times where she was denied adequate nutrition and medical attention.
She was even threatened with solitary confinement for requesting to be sent to the infirmary.
The prison staff forced her to choose between phone calls and recreation time.
A cruel decision for any expecting mother.
As my daughter's pregnancy progressed, I attend every court hearing, hoping to see her and assure myself of her well-being.
Every time I saw her in court, she looked so sick, sweating a lot, hunched over.
It was heartbreaking to witness her in heavy metal shackles around her belly, ankles, a practice that continued throughout her pregnancy.
The darkest moments began in early February of 2018, when for two agonizing weeks, I received no word from my daughter.
The days that followed were chaotic and deeply distressing.
The Connecticut Department of Children and Families called me and informed me that she had given birth.
DCF asked me to meet at my home to fill out paperwork so that I could go meet my granddaughter.
Shortly after filing the papers, I learned that my granddaughter was in the NIQ for being born premature and underweight, malnourished.
When I went to the hospital, DCF met me there so that I could meet my granddaughter.
During the custody process, I learned that my daughter had been medically neglected and that my granddaughter was born in the prison, not in the hospital like I thought.
I was confused.
I was scared.
I knew my daughter was nearby because a nurse told me that she had put a big red ball in my granddaughter's hair.
I felt relieved to know that my granddaughter, I'm sorry, that my daughter saw my granddaughter, but nobody would tell me anything about my daughter or granddaughter.
I could not see or talk to my daughter.
I later learned that she was shackled to the hospital bed four days post-delivery.
A practice that is not only inhumane, but also illegal in the state of Connecticut.
In March 2019, I learned for the first time the full extent of how my granddaughter was born when my daughter initiated a lawsuit against the prison.
The lawsuit settle a year later revealed the horrifying truth.
My granddaughter was not born in a hospital as I had believed, but into a prison toilet after my daughter's desperate cries for help went unanswered.
On February 9th, my daughter started experiencing labor symptoms, abdominal pain, and discharge.
Medical and correctional staff dismissed her pleas, providing only a heating pad and instructing her to lie down for four more agonizing days.
She told me she felt like a caged animal throughout her pregnancy at York, which pains me into this day.
Through the lawsuit, I also learned that on February 13, my daughter began bleeding while using the toilet.
She called for help, but nobody responded.
Security camera footage shows my daughter placing a t-shirt between her legs, grasping the prison walls for support as she tried to walk to breakfast.
When she came back, she sat on the toilet.
The t-shirt was completely bloody.
She began to scream for help when she realized her baby was coming.
Nobody came.
My granddaughter was born into the toilet bowl.
She was unresponsive and not breathing once she was outside of my daughter's body.
If not for my daughter's quick thinking and her cellmates help to pat my granddaughter's back and get the water out of her, she would not be alive today.
When prison staff finally arrived, their response was so cruel and insensitive.
They joked that my granddaughter had took her first swim and proceed to cut her umbilical cord inside a dirty prison cell, disregarding her dignity and well-being of both my daughter and my granddaughter.
My daughter should have received proper medical care and support throughout her pregnancy, and my granddaughter should have been born in a safe and sanitary environment, not in a prison cell.
This experience I left us scared and deeply distrustful of a system that failed to protect my daughter's basic human rights.
No family should endure what mine has suffered.
Prisons must do better to ensure families are informed throughout a woman's pregnancy and to prioritize the health and well-being of mother and child.
My daughter was deprived of the medical care she desperately needed.
No human being shall endure such cruelty and neglect.
No mother or grandmother should feel as helpless as I have felt.
I urge this subcommittee to let my family's ordeal serve as a spark for a change and compassion in our criminal justice system.
I want to thank you all for allowing me to share my daughter's and my granddaughter's story today.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much, Ms. LeBois.
Dr. Sufran, your opening statement, please.
Good afternoon, senators, and thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you today.
My name is Carolyn Suffren.
I'm a board-certified obstetrician gynecologist and a PhD researcher at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
I'm also a fellow with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and I've spent the last 17 years working to understand and improve care and conditions for pregnant and postpartum incarcerated women.
I've done so by providing clinical care inside a jail, conducting extensive research, publishing over 80 peer-reviewed articles, and writing national guidelines on best practices for care for this population.
And the views I'm expressing today are my own, do not necessarily reflect those of Johns Hopkins University or Johns Hopkins Medicine.
So I got into this work when I was called to a delivery when I was a first-year OBGYN resident doctor in training in Pennsylvania.
Everything about the room was as usual.
There were IV poles, fetal heart rate monitors, and a mother about to push a baby into the world.
But one thing was different.
The mom-to-be was shackled to the bed.
Nothing in my training had prepared me for this moment.
And since that night, 20 years ago, I've conducted dozens of research studies that have revealed systematic deficiencies in care for incarcerated pregnant and postpartum women.
As I began to provide OBGYN care in a county jail, I tried to find out how many pregnant women are incarcerated and how many give birth while they're in custody.
What I found was shocking.
There were no such statistics.
This was in 2015, less than 10 years ago.
So my team at Johns Hopkins conducted the Pregnancy and Prison Statistics, or PIPS, study.
From 2016 to 2017, 22 state prison systems, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the five largest jails reported monthly pregnancy outcomes data to our study.
And we found that in just that one year, there were 3,018 admissions of pregnant patients to these facilities.
And over 1,000 of these pregnancies ended in custody, with 897 births.
Now, when we extrapolate these data nationally, we estimated that there are nearly 58,000 admissions of pregnant women to U.S. jails and prisons each year.
And yet, PIPS was a one-time study.
It could not include all 50 states or all 3,000-plus jails.
And so there remains today no full national count of pregnancy and births in prisons and jails.
So if we don't know how many pregnant women are behind bars, then people think they don't exist.
And if people think they don't exist, then it makes it easy for prisons and jails to neglect their health care needs, as you've heard so tragically today.
And indeed, this is what my and others' research has shown, and what you've already heard from Ms. LeBoy and Ms. Umberger.
There are no mandatory standards for pregnancy care that prisons and jails must follow.
And so research has shown that access to such care is variable, often substandard, or even absent.
For instance, in a survey my team conducted of all U.S. jails, only 31% did routine pregnancy testing within two weeks of arrival.
So if jails don't test for pregnancy, then they can proceed as though there are no pregnant women in custody.
This means that many pregnant patients will have time-sensitive medical needs that go unaddressed.
My research has also documented alarming deficiencies in life-saving care for the estimated 8,000 incarcerated pregnant women with opioid use disorder.
Although the long-established standard of care in pregnancy is treatment with methadone or buprenorphine, in our national survey of jails, only 32% of them provided pregnant women with access to these medications.
And even at facilities that did provide treatment in pregnancy, three-quarters of them forced patients to go off medications after the baby was born.
This puts mothers and babies at risk for severe harm, including deadly overdose.
And we know that opioid overdose is a leading cause of maternal mortality in the United States.
Now, when it comes to the issue of shackling pregnant women, it's well established that this increases the risks of medical harms during labor and throughout pregnancy.
As we have heard, 41 states and the District of Columbia now have laws prohibiting the practice.
However, they are not always followed.
In the PIPS study, four departments of corrections had policies or practices that violated state law and allowed shackling.
And my obstetrician colleagues in states with anti-shackling laws tell me of officers shackling pregnant patients all the time, overapplying the exceptions that these laws have.
The fact that in 2024, pregnant women are shackled while giving birth, putting them and their babies at risk, is a profound assault on their dignity, safety, and human rights.
The time is long past due to change conditions for incarcerated pregnant and postpartum women.
They deserve and have the right to access comprehensive quality medical care.
We must recognize the connections between the mortality, maternal mortality crisis and incarceration, and we can start by collecting national-scale data that link maternal health outcomes with incarceration.
Because without data, we cannot know the full scope of the problems and their solutions.
Our nation's conscience must see that what happens or does not happen to pregnant women behind bars is a human rights issue.
The time to act is now.
Thank you.
Thank you, Dr. Suffren.
I want to begin with a few questions and an expression again of gratitude for sharing these incredibly traumatic and difficult personal stories with the public and the subcommittee.
Ms. Umberger, did I hear you correctly that you endured solitary confinement for three weeks after giving birth without access to your infant?
Yes, sir.
That is what happened.
In this room for solitary, for three weeks, so many things were going through my mind.
It was so hot in there.
No air conditioning.
I would lay at the bottom of the door for air.
Obviously, I couldn't shower properly.
I didn't even have my property.
Nobody could give me any, provide any updates on how my daughter was doing.
Did she pass her hearing test?
You know, did she, is she okay?
Yeah, I was scared.
And you were still in the early days of healing from surgery.
Absolutely.
You testified that you were able to hold your newborn baby for just two hours after giving birth and that you didn't see her again for almost three years.
Is that right?
Yes, sir.
I had two hours to hold and look at her.
I remember thinking just how pretty she was.
Like, I didn't deserve her.
And I carried that memory.
That's what I held on to.
Ms. LaBoye, did I understand correctly from your testimony that your granddaughter was born into a prison toilet after the prison and medical staff ignored your daughter's cries for help as she went into labor?
Yes, sir.
Prison staff ignored her for hours, for days.
That particular morning, she gave birth into a bull.
She was ignored.
My granddaughter was unresponsive.
If it wasn't for my daughter's quick thinking and the cellmates, I don't think my granddaughter would be here.
And your daughter and her cellmate had to resuscitate?
Yes, they did.
My daughter did.
The cellmate was behind the wall.
She heard my daughter screaming for help.
And my daughter didn't know the baby wasn't crying.
She was unresponsive.
So the cellmate was able to tell her through the wall to tap the baby and get the fluids out.
And when the prison staff finally arrived, they ridiculed.
It was too late when they arrived.
The baby was very, yeah, they were very unsensitive.
They made jokes, she took her first swim.
After your granddaughter had been put into a prison toilet, that was the response of the prisoner?
Yes, they were very insensitive.
They made jokes about it.
When you learned as a parent and as a grandparent the circumstances of your granddaughter's birth, how did you react?
How did that make you feel as a human being?
Really hurts.
It was painful.
She actually, my first grandchild, my daughter's first child.
I felt helpless to know that my daughter was scared alone, that they ignore her, they disregarded her.
They were very insensitive.
So it really hurts me as her mother to know that they treated her like this.
Dr. Suffren, the subcommittee received dozens of reports.
And I want to emphasize that from my colleagues on the subcommittee, we're hearing some very powerful personal testimonies.
The subcommittee has received dozens of reports from currently and formerly incarcerated women that they went into labor, and then they were told they needed to wait, sometimes for days or a week, just to see a physician.
You testified that access to health care may be variable, substandard, or even absent.
I presume this means, Doctor, that some state prisons and jails don't always have any qualified medical staff on site.
Thank you, Senator, for your question.
And yes, that is true.
Many jails, especially small rural jails, do not have medical staff on site 24-7.
And in those cases, it's the custody officers who should always refer pregnant women with issues such as labor to a qualified medical provider or call 911.
But that doesn't always happen.
And a 2019 report from the Prison Policy Initiative, they reviewed policies at 50 state departments of corrections and the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
They found that 24 states did not even codify that they had pre-existing arrangements for where they would take pregnant women in labor.
Imagine that.
No formal policy or protocol for where they would take a pregnant woman if she went into labor.
They also found that 23 states' policies didn't include screening and treatment for high-risk pregnancies.
But even at facilities that do have medical staff on site, the correctional officer is still the first point of contact.
You can't just pick up the phone and call your obstetrician or your midwife or get yourself to a hospital labor and delivery unit.
So correctional officers are tasked with triaging and being the gatekeepers to medical care.
And they are sort of tasked with acting in the role of a nurse when they don't have any medical training to know when someone's having a pregnancy emergency or when they're in labor.
And what that looks like, you've heard what that looks like: is that someone could be neglected either intentionally or due to the lack of knowledge of the custody staff, and she delivers in her cell.
Thank you, Dr. Sufferin.
Chair Durbin.
After the drafting of the Constitution, the decision was made that there would be a Bill of Rights.
Ten provisions that are so basic and fundamental to the United States that they were set out in detail as part of our Constitution.
The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution provides excessive bail should not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted.
What have we heard today?
If what we've heard is not cruel and unusual, God help me.
I can't imagine.
To endanger the life of a new infant, to endanger the life of the mother.
Dr. Sufran, it seems to go beyond the physical.
Trying to measure the mental distress that Ms. Umberger, Ms. Lavoie's daughter, and others are going through at a time when they should be joyous, bringing new life in this world.
Can you speak to that issue?
Thank you, Senator, for your question.
And yes, I can.
70% of incarcerated women have mental health conditions even before they go through, if they're pregnant, the trauma of birthing behind bars.
And so when you add to that the trauma, the degradation, the physical harm, that compounds, and that can cause additional harm and psychiatric and mental health conditions as well.
We think we're so enlightened, this generation of political leaders, myself included, because we speak in honest terms about mental illness and treating it, making sure that our health insurance covers it, being open about the aspect of trauma and what it does to a person's mind.
We go through episodes of violence, crime, murder, and much of it is traced back to trauma that these young people experienced in an early life.
What I hear described today is the trauma that these two witnesses, one our daughter and Ms. Umberger personally, have gone through in their lives.
Her daughter was facing a sentence, Ms. Umberger, as well, but that sentence did not include trauma and mental distress and cruel punishment.
In fact, there was constitutional guarantee that would not happen.
Ms. Umberger, it's painful to even ask this question.
But is your daughter put in foster care during the time that you didn't see her?
Yes, sir.
And what is her status today?
She's home.
She's with her father.
She lives with him full-time.
They gave him full custody while I was still incarcerated.
Is it customary for the children to be put in foster care in these circumstances?
I'm happy to answer that question, Senator Durbin.
It depends.
If there is a family member who is able to care for that infant, then that is what happens.
But many, many people do not have a trusted individual who has the resources and ability to care for a newborn.
And in that case, yes.
The default is to go into the foster care system.
Can you give me any rationale for the removal of an infant from a new mother so that she cannot nurse her or care for her personally?
No, I cannot.
I can't either.
I suppose there are some extraordinary cases involving public safety where you might be able to make that argument, but they would truly be extraordinary.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Chair Durbin.
Senator Kennedy.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for calling this hearing.
Ms. Umberger, you were in a Georgia state prison.
Yes, that is correct.
Okay.
And Ms. LeBoy, am I saying your name right?
Yes, sir.
Your daughter was in a state prison?
Yes.
Your correctional.
And Georgia?
Your correctional.
In Connecticut.
In Connecticut.
In Liana, Connecticut.
Okay, yes.
Well, I want to thank both of you for coming.
I mean, your testimony was instructive, but that sounds kind of sterile when you put it that way.
It was also moving.
I know these four colleagues well.
Hope we'll have another hearing on this subject.
I would like to sit down with them and others and try to figure out how to address this problem.
I've had this discussion with Senator Booker before.
I think we need to address the issue of solitary confinement in our presence.
We need to involve law enforcement.
I'm hoping in another hearing we'll offer the Georgia state officials the chance to come in and tell us what happened here and offer constructive suggestions.
I guess what I'm saying is I pledge to you to try to sit down and let's see if we can't address this problem.
I'm going to have to leave in a second.
I don't want you to be offended by that.
We've got a vote going on.
Dr. Suffren, tell me your credentials again.
I'm a board-certified obstetrician gynecologist, and I also have a doctoral degree.
And you're a professor?
I'm a professor at Johns Hopkins University.
And the medical school?
In the School of Medicine and at the School of Public Health.
Okay.
You're a chair, professor?
I am not.
Okay.
All right.
But you represent, or you are, part of the Johns Hopkins system.
I am, but I'm not representing Johns Hopkins.
Understand.
Understand.
Well, if we're going to solve this problem, we've got to be candid with each other.
Do you have a Twitter account?
Thank you, Senator, for your question, but I'm here today to talk about my expertise on reproductive health care for incarcerated women.
Is your Twitter account JailCare?
That is a, thank you, Senator.
That is a Twitter account that is associated with a book that I published in 2017.
But I'm really here today to talk about my expertise on reproductive health care and pregnancy care for incarcerated women.
On September 29th at 2018.
On 2018.
At 3.33, I'm going to read you one of your tweets.
These are your words, not mine.
Quote, Piper reminding us that gathering to discuss ending incarceration of women girls.
Piper reminding us that gathering to discuss ending incarceration of women and girls is anecdote to white supremacist Kavanaugh shit show.
Professor, did I read that correctly?
Thank you for reciting that.
I'm really here today to talk about research and improving conditions for incarcerated pregnant women.
Were you speaking for Johns Hopkins when you sent this out?
I was not speaking for Johns Hopkins.
Well, I'd like to solve this problem, Professor.
But we're not going to slide with that kind of attitude.
Thank you, ladies, for being here.
I appreciate the courage that it took to come forward today.
Yes, sir.
Thank you.
As tempted as I am, Dr. Suffren, to take the bait, my suggestion is that we return to the substantive matter at hand, which is the widespread abuse and mistreatment of pregnant and postpartum women in America's prisons and jails.
And I yield to Senator Booker.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
There's wide room here for bipartisan work, and I'm grateful for my experiences with the First Step Act when we came forward on these issues and found from the White House, then the Trump White House to Republican colleagues and others.
I want to particularly thank Senator Durbin, who really has been the champion of so many of these issues.
And under his leadership and having the chance to partner with him on the First Step Act, we were able to make some progress.
But clearly, we still live in a nation where what goes on in our prisons is horrible.
And what compounds that horror is the abject lack of knowledge that these things are going on.
I mean, I'm still shocked that our government, which is responsible, or excuse me, our Article I branch of the Constitution, Article I branch being Congress, has a responsibility to provide oversight.
We spend billions of dollars to incarcerate human beings, but there's an utter lack of knowledge about what our regular routine practices in our American prisons, not to mention our American prisons and jails.
And the testimony here today, which is gut-wrenching and painful, and I thank the witnesses for being here and retelling what has to be trauma in your lives and not your family.
It is so urgent that this truth-telling happen because it shocks the moral conscience of a country that allows these practices to go on.
And here's the painful truth, that we throw people into environments that re-traumatize folks who often have been traumatized.
And most of the people that go to our prisons and jails come out again, now more harmed and more hurt than when they went in.
And so if this is really about public safety, We do things that undermine and insult the idea that our prisons and jails should be places, yes,
of punishment, but also should be places that empower people, that when they come out, they should never return, that empower people on pathways of redemption and rehabilitation.
And it is grievously painful to know these details, only some of which are being talked about here, about what happens to the most vulnerable people in our society who are survivors of sexual trauma, who struggle with mental health issues, who have often been victimized,
and who often struggle with addiction, that we would put them into an environment that would so compound these problems.
I cannot tell you the horrors of being put into solitary confinement.
Most countries call what we do to vulnerable people torture.
Ms. Umberger, to you being in the immediate hours of postpartum and being put in solitary confinement after being traumatized, not for days, but for weeks, is unconscionable that it happens in this country.
Unconscionable what you were put through.
As Senator Durbin says, it is cruel.
It is fundamentally cruel.
And I know Ms. Suffren knows this, Dr. Suffren knows this, that all the data shows that we empower women, we facilitate their connections to their children, we give them not just medical treatment, but sociopsychological support, that they actually have recidivism rates that crash to the floor.
And the bonds of their families, not only are they supported, but the data shows clearly that even their children's run-ins with the law go far down.
We know from evidence and research that trauma is generational and we are creating not only assaults on individual dignity of the women, but we are hurting and harming families in ways that will haunt our society and those individuals directly affected.
And so, Mr. Chairman, I am grateful for this hearing, but I ache.
Every prison and jail I've gone to shows me how much we waste taxpayer dollars, causing more and more harm to our society and individuals we incarcerate, and how there are obvious, obvious ways that we could be investing in the well-being of people behind bars that would empower them to be successful in lives, in their lives, and empower their families.
This is one of the more shameful elements of American society when all the data, all the research, all the evidence shows that we could do this in a better way that would make us safer and stronger as a society.
I do hope we continue to hold hearings on this because I know my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
There is no way, Mr. Chairman, that shining lights on this can do anything but move us and inspire us to find bipartisan solutions so that these horrors that belong in a long-forgotten Byzantine age should not exist in our society today.
Again, I'm sorry that you had to come here.
This should not be necessary.
And what's even more painful is to know that the stories you told are not rare and not unusual, but exist all across this country at a rate that should shock the conscience of us all.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Senator Booker.
As you all may have noted, Senator Osoff had to depart.
He is suredly to return, but he needed to go vote before they closed the vote.
And I must say I am honored to be surrounded by my Democratic colleagues who, while are all trying to go and perform all of the duties that are expected of us most of the time simultaneously, but how honored I am to be surrounded by these men who are taking the care to highlight the issues that the rest of society, women,
go through each and every day.
Thank you all for being here, for being willing to share your painful and I would assume unbearable stories and leadership with the committee.
I share Senator Booker's notion about having gone inside the many jails and prisons up and down the state of California, men, women, juvenile, and everything in between.
And to know that we utilize taxpayer dollars to perpetuate this kind of hell is a shameful stain on our government.
And you have my commitment to continue to be a supportive advocate to end this.
I have a nine-year-old daughter that I come to this Capitol every single day to work on behalf of.
And were she to make a mistake in her life, and I know it is possible for her to do that for any of us.
As my grandmother would say, but for the grace of God, there might I be.
It is everything that I and we can do, not just for our children, but for America's children, to be able to make the kinds of change that your stories call us to make.
And so again, thank you for being here, for your leadership, scholarship, advocacy, and commitment, for being willing to tell the story of so many who may not ever have the opportunity to be in these halls, but whose stories are as valid, whether they're here or not.
I had a couple of questions that I wanted to give you all the opportunity to help to educate the American people who might be watching today's hearing about.
And one is related to a line of questioning that Mr. Durbin, Senator Durbin, asked relative to mental health.
And then I have a line of questioning relative to restraints.
I'll start with Ms. LeBoy.
Am I pronouncing that correctly?
Yes, ma'am.
I have a name with P's and Z's, and so I know that it is a struggle to make sure you get your name pronounced correctly.
Thank you.
Well, Ms. LeBois, thank you for being here.
You talked about your daughter and how she was restricted with belly chains while appearing in court.
Can you talk to the American people who don't understand this experience?
Help them to understand how this confinement impacts your daughter's physical and emotional well-being.
Thank you for that question.
It's been a struggle for her.
I remember every time I went through the court hearing, there was a door that she comes in, and I look at her feet that were swollen with the shackles on them around her belly.
But I feel like her mental health has been gotten worse since she had my granddaughter.
She even went through postpartum by herself.
There's no, they didn't really give her medical attention for that, those kind of things, like if she was home, you know.
So I guess she tried to manage by herself on her own.
Our phone calls, my letters.
Pretty much she got through it by herself.
And she's still struggling with a lot of mental health six years later.
Thank you.
It is the unfortunate reality of so many, trying to figure out ways to manage trauma on your own without the tools or support that you would otherwise have access to just a hug sometimes.
Exactly.
Right.
And thank you for what you are doing to tell your family's experience to make this system better for folks who might encounter it again.
Dr. Sufferin, you have been an advocate in this, in a space of a leader in this space.
The question that I had, again, in an effort to educate the American people who might be watching, who may find this hearing on YouTube a year or so later.
Help us to think about what kinds of policy changes are needed at the Bureau of Prisons and at the state and local level.
As I said, I've been in all kinds and types of facilities.
What kind of policy changes are needed to protect women who are incarcerated from these kinds of physical as well as mental wounds that they might encounter during childbirth and prison?
Thank you, Senator, for your question.
There are many opportunities for policy and practice change that could improve conditions and the well-being of pregnant and postpartum women in prisons and jails, as well as for their newborns.
One is to find a pathway to require medical standards of care.
We heard earlier from Senator Durbin about the Eighth Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment.
And in fact, there is a precedent for requiring prisons and jails to provide access to medical care because not to do so would be considered a violation of the Eighth Amendment, and that is in the Supreme Court case 1976, Estelle v. Gamble.
However, that requirement for institutions of incarceration to provide access to medical care did not come with any system of oversight, any mandatory set of standards that prisons and jails have to follow.
And so we need a pathway in order to have a set of standards.
These guidelines, recommended standards, do exist.
It's just they're optional.
One potential pathway to get to requiring standards and oversight is to consider changes to Medicaid, which currently exclude incarcerated individuals, the so-called inmate exclusion clause.
If we can modify that and open up funding for incarcerated people's health care, that can potentially come with some improvements in standards of care, and that includes for mental health care.
So that is one set of policy changes that could potentially improve the quality of care.
Thank you so much, Dr. Suffren.
I'm prepared to turn to my colleague Senator Blumenthal if he's ready, or I can keep going and give you some time.
Ready?
Okay.
Senator Blumenthal.
Thank you very much, Senator Butler, and thank you to all three of our witnesses.
I'll try to avoid repeating what you may have already told us, but I think that this topic is so important and the problem is so prevalent that some of the answers may actually merit repeating.
We're talking here about interviews that this subcommittee has conducted with 100 formerly or currently incarcerated survivors of pregnancy in state prisons or jails where they've been denied proper care.
When a prisoner, say it's a male prisoner, breaks a leg or suffers a concussion or a cut, they are provided medical care.
Often inadequate medical care, but there's at least a recognition that the broken leg has to be put in a cast or the cut has to be given stitches.
Some medical care is provided.
What we're seeing with the women who have been through pregnancy or postpartum experiences, 200 documented human rights abuses, are simply beyond the pale in a civilized society, at least in the United States of America.
And there's no way that it serves the purposes of incarceration.
One of those purposes is punishment.
But what we're talking about here is simply lack of humanity that in no way is an acceptable form of punishment.
And it is focused on women.
Our investigation spanned 32 states.
It's not isolated or unique to one state.
Some states do better than others.
One of our witnesses is from Connecticut, my state.
I want to thank Corrine LeBoy for sharing your experience, which I know has been deeply painful.
I want to thank you for talking to me earlier for this hearing and giving me some of your insights into your daughter's experience.
The simple fact is that the state of Connecticut, in denying Tiana proper care, not only violated basic standards of decency, but a court order, a consent order adopted years previously.
Your litigation resulted in a settlement.
I know that settlements don't necessarily explicitly acknowledge responsibility, but certainly they're a sign of it.
And maybe most important, it caused Connecticut to adopt a statute.
After your horrifying ordeal, Connecticut has attempted to form the way it treats pregnant and postpartum incarcerated women at the York Correctional Institution, both through legislation and a shift in who provides health services at the facility.
Pregnant inmates now at York are given counseling and information about their pregnancy, medical care, including periodic monitoring and prenatal vitamins, a diet to support a healthy pregnancy, sanitary materials, and access to qualified medical health professionals for postpartum treatment.
At least that is what they are supposed to receive.
That is what they're entitled to receive under law.
And I'm proud that the state legislature has moved forward with those reforms as a result of your experience and frankly your advocacy.
So I'm here to say thank you to you and Tiana and Navea, your granddaughter, who is about to enter first grade in New Britain.
Congratulations to her.
Thank you so much.
And your daughter will be released this fall, perhaps as early as October.
And congratulations to her on completing her incarceration.
But my question to you is, do you think these reforms are having a positive effect on the treatment of pregnant and postpartum women who are incarcerated, so far as you know, in the Connecticut system?
I believe so.
I haven't recently been up there because they've been on lockdown and other situations she was dealing with.
But I believe she made some changes.
Sadly, we had to come through this to make some changes happen, but they are getting, she's making some changes in the prison as far as prenatal care and other.
And I hope that it just be worldwide, not just Connecticut.
And your granddaughter has been in your home, correct?
Yes.
Since she was five weeks, she came straight from the hospital to my home.
And from what I can tell, she's been the light of your life.
Yes.
Definitely.
Yes.
She's a blessing.
Probably Tiana will live at least for a while with you once she's released along with your granddaughter.
She'll be close, yes.
She wants to have her own place and stuff, but she's going to be close and she's going to be spending a lot of time with the family.
It's been years.
You've been through a lot.
Yes, sir.
We're here not just to decry and denounce that inhumanity, but also to celebrate the enormous courage and strength of women like you and your daughter, Tiana, and Nevaya, even though she's only now six years old.
Yes.
Who are working your way through a real ordeal and the after effects of it, but showing great grace and dignity and grit, which can be an example for us all.
And your advocacy has special meaning today and always in Connecticut.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, sir.
It means a lot.
Thank you, Senator Blumenthal.
Senator Welch.
Thank you all for being here.
What a wonderful mom you are.
Thank you.
And grandmother, too.
It's amazing how you find it deep in you to be able to be so supportive of your daughter and your grandchild.
So thank you so much.
Thank you, sir.
It took a lot of strength and courage to be here.
It did.
And you've got a lot of strength and a lot of courage.
So thank you.
And I just can only imagine what it means to your daughter to know the care you're taking for her and her child.
So good for you.
Doctor, I'm wondering if you could just, you probably were asked this already, so don't repeat necessarily, but what are the specific things that should be done to care for women giving birth while incarcerated,
that should be part of the routine and then address some of the resistance that is put in the way of treating folks who are going to be delivering the right way.
Thank you, Senator.
Thank you, Senator, for your question.
The services and care that should be provided to incarcerated pregnant women should be equivalent to the community standards of care.
There are well-established guidelines, evidence-based practices that I've been practicing for decades when it comes to caring for pregnant women, whether they're in the community or incarcerated.
And incarcerated pregnant women should be cared for by those same exact medical standards.
But on top of that, which includes things like routine prenatal visits, ultrasounds, laboratory tests, according to established guidelines, on top of that, women who are incarcerated and pregnant need additional support, additional mental health support for the trauma they're enduring, whether or not they have pre-existing mental health conditions.
Because as you have heard today, and as we know, this represents so many more women, the conditions, even under the best of circumstances, which are few and far between, are still inherently traumatic.
And so additional supports are needed.
Some examples of those include, and we heard from Senator Booker earlier a little bit about this, providing doula support for incarcerated pregnant women during their pregnancy, during childbirth in the hospital, and afterwards.
While they're in the hospital undergoing childbirth, incarcerated women should be treated with the same dignity and respect as any woman who is giving birth.
She should not, under any circumstances, have to give birth in chains.
This is the marker of a barbaric society, a barbaric practice that should not happen.
It is medically unsafe for the mother and for the baby, and it is an affront to their dignity as well.
Thank you.
By the way, you know, we're talking about giving birth pregnancy, but the medical standard, shouldn't that apply across the board to the medical needs of folks who are incarcerated?
Absolutely.
Medical standards of care that would apply to non-incarcerated women absolutely apply to incarcerated women as well.
I'm sorry, Ms. Zumberger, I missed your testimony, but you've gone through this.
So maybe just for my benefit, describe a little bit more what you went through and what you'd recommend.
Well, giving birth, the whole process of giving birth in prison was traumatizing.
Having only two short hours to hold and look at my newborn before not seeing her for a few years later, that was tough.
I was put in solitary confinement because I was worried about getting Marsa from a woman that they had initially put me in the room with.
I just asked for cleaning supplies and next thing I know I was in solitary.
That experience in itself was tough.
There's no access to medical care.
You are the last person to get any food on the whole entire compound.
So by the time it gets to you, it's hard as a brick or it's really, really cold.
It's not well.
It's not good.
And then, you know, having my children and foster care and me getting out and having the mission to find a home and that search was difficult as well.
I had to buy a house nine months post-incarceration.
So, but yeah, I'm still healing.
It's been my daughter will be six and I'm still healing.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, thank you very much for that.
I yield back.
Thank you, Senator Welch and Ms. Umberger.
You testified it feels like your kids were serving time alongside you and being punished with you.
Yeah.
Can you elaborate on that?
Yes.
So as we have started the reunification process, we've been in it for about a year now.
I've gotten to know them pretty well.
And they're sitting around, you know, the dinner table, and a memory will, something will trigger a memory.
And do you remember that time when Miss So-and-so did this to me, or Miss So-and-so did that to me?
Do you remember this?
And they'll be like, Yeah, that was tough.
And then, yeah, mom, did you know that Eli wasn't allowed to eat fresh food?
He only could eat leftovers and he had to stay in his room.
It's as if my children were also doing Tom.
Some of the things that they were saying are the things that I experienced as well.
It's like he was being punished for being in foster care, like he had done, like as if he had been bad.
Well, in fact, as this subcommittee has found through our work investigating the conditions faced by children in foster care in Georgia, those conditions do mirror detention conditions in group homes, for example.
And in fact, we've even seen suggestions by some senior officials in the state of Georgia to place foster children in juvenile detention facilities for a lack of adequate placement.
So you were incarcerated, forced to endure this indescribably horrific experience as a delivering mother, all the while your children were also being punished.
I appreciate you helping the public to understand how you're not the only one harmed by the way these situations are handled and managed.
I want to focus on the fact that you testified prison staff told you you were required to undergo a C-section, even though you expressed your desire for vaginal delivery, correct?
Yes, yes, I wanted a natural birth.
I knew I could have a natural birth considering I'd had a VBAC, which is vaginal birth after cesarean.
I had already had a successful VBAC, so I knew what was possible as far as medical.
I knew it was medically possible for me to do this.
But I was scheduled for a cesarean, and then it was placed on my credit.
I was also billed for it as well.
So, yeah, that was something I was like, I don't even have control over my own body.
Like, the judge said nothing about that when he sentenced me to prison.
There was none of that mentioned.
So, you were required to undergo surgery you didn't want?
Yes, sir.
And then you were required to pay for it?
Yes, sir.
Required by the state?
Yes, sir.
The Department of Corrections, Georgia, Department of Corrections.
Dr. Sufferin, the subcommittee received seven other reports, and I want everyone to know we've been looking at this for just a few months, and this is a relatively small team here.
So the fact that we've received seven other reports from formerly incarcerated women that they were also told by prison staff that they were required to undergo a C-section suggests to me that the problem, that this phenomenon is much, much more widespread.
Is it medically sound to require incarcerated pregnant women to undergo a C-section?
No, sir.
Thank you for your question.
And to elaborate, having a routine policy, whether it's a medical policy or a custody policy, to require women to have a C-section as their mode of delivery is medically unsound.
Best medical practice is that this should be a decision that is between the patient and their obstetrician or their midwife, their caregiver, based on their circumstances.
And if someone has no medical indication for a C-section, a vaginal birth is the preferred option.
It is the safest option, as was the case in Ms. Umberger, who has already had a vaginal birth since her cesarean section.
It is not a sound, evidence-based, or safe policy to routinely schedule C-sections.
A lot of jails are using contract arrangements for medical services, correct?
Yes.
What's more lucrative from a billing standpoint, vaginal delivery or a C-section?
My expertise is not necessarily in billing, but major surgery does cost more money than a vaginal birth.
Well, it may be worth looking into whether there are corrupt financial incentives in some cases that are driving these facilities, which control the course of treatment for patients in their care toward more expensive, more invasive, and potentially more complicated surgeries.
We have identified more than 100 reports nationwide that pregnant and postpartum women in prisons and jails were medically neglected.
Ms. LeBois, you testified that when your daughter started to experience labor symptoms, including abdominal pain and discharge, the medical and prison staff repeatedly dismissed her concerns, just giving her a heating pad, telling her to, quote, just lie down.
As a mother, how did it make you feel to learn that that is how your daughter had been treated entering labor?
Thank you for that question.
It was hard, being that I kind of talked to her on the phone like mostly all the time before all this took place.
I think that there's no word to explain how I felt as a mother.
This was my first grandbaby.
I became a grandmother while my daughter was in prison.
And it should have been something that it would have, she should have been born in a hospital.
She should have been born in a safe environment, not an unsanitary place, not into a toilet bowl.
I don't think any mother would want to hear that her granddaughter or grandson was born into a toilet bowl.
It was very painful to know that they disregarded my daughter's dignity, her well-being.
It hurts a lot to this day.
Dr. Sufferin, I presume that giving someone a heating pad and sending them back to their prison cell to lie down is not the standard of care for a pregnant woman entering labor.
No, sir, it is not.
And especially in the case of Ms. LaBois' daughter, it sounds like she was preterm.
And the signs and symptoms of preterm labor can be very subtle, very subtle.
Some cramping, light bleeding, change in your vaginal discharge, very subtle, and they require urgent attention from a qualified provider and not a heating pad.
Ms. Umberger, you described how after you gave birth, a male sergeant refused to leave your hospital room and watched while a nurse took care of you.
Yes.
How did that experience impact you at the time and now?
I still remember his eyes.
I just, I was in shock when he refused to leave the room.
You know, I was paralyzed from the waist down.
I had been in surgery.
You know, nothing about me even showed any past violent behaviors or anything like that.
You know, my dignity was taken down to the knees of vulnerability.
Like I was, it's like I was not a real person.
Like, you know, the fact that he was just looking at us, I still remember to this day, like it was yesterday.
Nobody should ever have to go through that.
I want to thank from the bottom of my heart our panel today And Dr. Suffren, of course, we're grateful for your expertise and for the precision and the research and evidence-based information that you've shared with the Senate today.
And I hope you won't mind if I extend my deepest gratitude to Ms. Umberger and Ms. LeBois for speaking today in public in front of the nation on something so deeply painful and personal for you.
And before I wrap up and summarize what I think we've learned and where we go from here, I'd just like to offer each of you the opportunity, if you desire, to say anything you want to share with the Senate, with the public, with the nation about what you've been through and what you think this country needs to do to change for the better.
Ms. Umberger, we'll begin with you, please.
Well, first, as I had described earlier, being in that basement and looking out that caged window, wondering if anybody cared, I think what you've done here today and how you have brought the other members of the Senate here to listen and actually show that they care is a great start.
I never thought I would be here speaking with you.
And just when a woman is giving birth, even though the paper says she is an incarcerated woman, morally know that she is a mother, she is a sister, she is a daughter.
She is more than a number and should be treated as such.
I did this today for the women who are behind those walls, who are still actively going through things that we described here today.
And our country, it needs to be better.
It should be better.
I was promised better.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Umberger.
Ms. LeBois.
Thank you.
I just want to say before I get my last statement, it's harder to know that to know that my daughter went through this,
but sitting here next to someone that physically experienced this makes me emotional.
No family, no mother should go through this.
They did not receive medical care.
My daughter didn't receive medical care.
They were ignored, treated like animals.
And I wouldn't even say an animal because I have a cat and not even cats give birth by themselves like the way my daughter did, like an animal, like somebody disregarded her.
No family should endure this.
No mother should endure this kind of pain.
They were ignored.
Their human rights were just not protected.
Their dignity was taken.
No children should have been born in a toilet bowl.
And I want to thank you.
I want to thank everyone that's here today because it means, it shows that there is hope for a change, that the prison could be better.
That no family have to deal with this ordeal, this kind of pain.
We just got to do better.
I hope that this makes things better, a spark for a change.
And I just want to say that I thank everyone that's here, everyone that's listening, that's watching, that's going to watch this down the line, that no matter if you behind bars, they should have the same medical treatment after they were home.
They should have the same rights and they should protect the basic human rights.
They should not be treated like this.
We need to do better in the prison system.
Thank you, Ms. LaBoy.
And Ms. Umberger, I just haven't been able to get out of my mind the part of the story you shared with us just after you delivered, just after your surgery, and you're taken down into the basement into a caged room, subjected to indignity.
And you told us how you were sitting there laying there, just wondering if anybody knew that this is how human beings are treated in America.
And whether anyone would care.
And how alone you must have felt, and how you just said a moment ago you felt betrayed.
You were promised better than this.
And I right now, as we sit here in this wood-paneled chamber, there are women on prison wards laboring,
bleeding, calling for help right as we speak, facing the same kind of inhumanity and neglect that Ms. Umberger did happening in jails across this country with taxpayer dollars.
It makes you think about how the United States goes around the world lecturing other nations on human rights.
But how can we hear what we've heard today and accept that even basic human rights are being protected in our society?
And I will say, Dr. Sufferin, that despite the strange moment earlier with my colleague, I think that there is the potential for bipartisanship.
But it takes the courage of this kind of testimony for politicians who may not naturally be sympathetic to hear directly from people who have been through this kind of thing what it means to get it beyond numbers.
And that's why it's so powerful what you've done today.
And there will be hundreds of thousands or millions of people across the country who will see tonight your testimony and understand better what's being done with their money in their name, supposedly consistent with our Constitution when clearly it's not.
And this won't be the end of this subcommittee's engagement as we continue this inquiry.
Thank you all so, so much for being here.
The hearing record will remain open for one week for statements to be submitted into the record.
Questions for the record may be submitted by senators by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, August 7th.
Hearing is adjourned.
Justice O'Connor knew the power of directness, and that included direct engagement with people.
I certainly felt that she felt she had a responsibility as the first woman on the Supreme Court to show that she could more than keep up with the boys.
But I think she also felt a responsibility as the most powerful woman in America to be out there putting her best foot forward and promoting the values that helped define our country.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts paid tribute to the late Justice Sandra Day O'Connor for her work in civics education during an event at Duke Law School in Durham, North Carolina.
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