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Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts paid tribute to the late Justice Sandra Day O'Connor for her work in civics education at an event at Duke Law School in Durham, North Carolina.
It is an honor to welcome you all to Duke University to celebrate the life and legacy of Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the 2024 recipient of the Carl and Susan Bulch Prize for the Rule of Law.
President Price asked me to share his deep regret that he could not join us this evening due to the travel delays that are affecting so many people right now.
But we are delighted that so many distinguished guests are here with us.
The Chief Justice of the United States, John G. Roberts and his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts.
Justice O'Connor's son, Scott O'Connor, and his wife Joni.
Susan Bass Bulch, co-founder of the Bolch Judicial Institute, and many current and former members of our federal and state judiciaries, including Chief Justice Paul M. Newby of the North Carolina Supreme Court and his wife Make.
I'm also delighted to see so many friends, faculty, students, and alumni of Duke Law School.
Peter Kahn, the chair of the Bolsch Judicial Institute Advisory Board and a former trustee of Duke University, is also here, along with several current and former members of the Advisory Board, all of whom have helped make the Institute so successful.
That this room is so full of so many distinguished people is a testament to the enduring legacy of tonight's honoree.
Justice O'Connor was a dear friend, colleague, and mentor to many in this room, and she was an inspiration to all of us.
Tonight, we celebrate her impact as a pathbreaking public servant and justice of our highest court, a model of civility and bipartisanship, and a founding force behind a civic education renaissance in our country.
Many of us know something about her incredible life and work, but I think we will see this evening that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor still has much to teach us.
The Bolsch Prize for the Rule of Law is a result of the generosity and dedication of Carl Bolch Jr., a 1967 graduate of Duke Law School, and his wife Susan Bass Bulch, a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center, who established the Bolch Judicial Institute with a generous gift to Duke Law School in 2018.
They charged the Institute with a specific mission, bettering the human condition by studying and promoting the rule of law.
This mission has inspired an array of educational programs, scholarly endeavors, and the creation of this prize, all of which aim to strengthen and support the judiciary and judicial systems here and around the world.
We regret that Carl Bulch couldn't be here today, but we are pleased to have Susan Bulch with us.
Susan, we owe tremendous thanks to you and Carl.
Thank you for your vision and your determination to advance and protect the rule of law.
I'd like to briefly introduce the first few speakers you will hear this evening.
First, we will hear from Professor Lisa Kern-Griffin, the Candace M. Carroll and Leonard B. Simon Distinguished Professor of Law at Duke Law School, where she teaches constitutional criminal procedure, evidence, and federal criminal justice.
Professor Griffin clerked for Justice O'Connor in the 1997-1998 term.
Following Professor Griffin, we'll hear from Judge Paul Grimm, the David F. Levy Professor of the Practice of Law and the Director of the Bulch Judicial Institute at Duke Law School.
Judge Grimm retired after 25 years as a federal district judge in Maryland before joining us here at Duke Law last year.
He will present the Bulch Prize to Scott O'Connor, who will accept on behalf of his late mother, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
Scott O'Connor recently retired from a career in commercial real estate.
In keeping with the lessons instilled in him by his parents, he is also a lifelong public servant, having served two terms as a city councilman and a volunteer in many organizations, all while working continuously to preserve his mother's legacy.
Following remarks from Mr. O'Connor, David F. Levy will introduce the remainder of our program.
David is the former Dean of Duke Law School, the former director of the Bulch Judicial Institute, and a former Chief United States District Judge for the Eastern District of California.
He is now the president of the American Law Institute.
Thank you very much to all of our distinguished speakers and to all of you for being here today.
Now I will turn it over to Professor Griffin.
Good evening, everyone.
It's a tremendous privilege to be here and to have a few minutes to say some words about working for Justice O'Connor.
Well, Justice O'Connor is rightly celebrated for expanding what was possible for women in every profession, and of course for the careful and pragmatic decisions that she wrote on the Supreme Court, it's my role to convey something about how remarkable she was up close.
She was more interesting than the icon that everyone could see from a distance because she contained some contrasts.
She was, as everyone knows, diligent and driven, but at no point did she ever exhibit any stress or urgency.
As the Chief Justice said at her memorial service, her most common piece of advice was just to get things done.
She was incredibly focused and present and preternaturally calm.
But calm and relaxed are not the same thing.
I would not describe Justice O'Connor as relaxed.
Even the annual outing with her clerks that many people have mentioned to see the cherry blossoms at the tidal basin was a scheduled forward march regardless of the inclement weather.
She was disciplined and precise, but she was never dour in any way.
She was warm and joyful with a mischievous sense of humor.
She loved a wicked joke or a silly skit.
She laughed often, and she smiled with a sparkle in her eyes.
She threw herself with vigor into riding horses, climbing mountains, playing sports or cards, cooking, entertaining, and of course, going out dancing with her beloved husband, John.
She was incredibly vivid, and every place she entered got a little bit brighter.
So she was often called a force of nature.
Many of her clerks were reminded of this at an extraordinary moment that I want to share from her homecoming to the Supreme Court in December.
She loved the Supreme Court building.
Though she was a person of faith, her biographer Evan Thomas aptly described it as her marble temple.
On this bright, cold, and blustery day, she was carried up the steps for her lying in repose, and she approached the equal justice under law engraved on the west pediment of the court.
Her clerks, almost 100 of us, lined the steps, and just as she reached the top, an enormous gust of wind swept over all of us and was later remarked on by almost every person standing there.
It felt somehow fitting because Justice O'Connor had momentum.
She never looked back.
She wasn't bitter about disadvantages in the past.
She didn't dwell on any disappointments.
She did not extend disagreements from one case to the next.
She was always moving forward and she carried other people along with her.
Of course, she was a pioneer, but she was not a loner.
She was generous and collaborative.
She gave other people both the credit and the benefit of the doubt.
Her parting message was that we should all try to help others along the way.
She really believed, and she often said, that we do not accomplish anything in this world alone.
As just one example, when she received the assignment to draft a decision requiring the admission of women to the Virginia Military Institute, Justice O'Connor immediately suggested that Justice Ginsburg write the landmark discrimination opinion instead.
And she said, this should be Ruth's.
She was a connector for all of her colleagues.
She got the Supreme Court justices to have lunch together, and they still credit her with that tradition.
She set an example for how to engage with other people and sometimes find your way to a compromise.
She was so vibrant that losing Justice O'Connor, even after her long illness, felt at first as though a light had gone out.
I am grateful to have had the chance to stand in a little bit of that light for a little bit of time alongside my co-clerks.
It was an extraordinary blessing, and I know that I am only one of so many because her example was amplified over thousands of people who knew and loved her.
At perhaps a dispiriting moment in our civic discourse, a spark of her optimism is a light that she left on.
And that is iCivics.
She founded this online resource to teach about the protections in our Constitution.
She wanted school children to become committed citizens and not to take democracy for granted.
And it now reaches almost 10 million users a year.
I think the Bolsch Prize is an especially fitting honor because it recognizes how she advanced the rule of law by modeling for us civil discourse and by continuing to teach citizenship even now.
I want to close by mentioning a second transcendent moment from Justice O'Connor's memorial in December.
A gorgeous rendition of America the Beautiful was sung at the conclusion of her service, per her own request and plan.
It was both moving and hopeful, because though she was a clear-eyed pragmatist, she was also the most idealistic of American patriots.
She chose that song because she cherished her country.
She embodied its sense of opportunity, and she left behind a roadmap for upholding its ideals.
That is her true bequest to all of us, and it's what we are here to celebrate tonight.
Thank you. Bicivics is my most important legacy.
I care about it a great deal.
I think it matters.
Over half of U.S. middle school and high school students, and that's great.
I want to reach every one of them if I can.
I want to see it used as an educational tool for every student in all 50 states.
I want students to learn how the government works and how, in essence, they're part of it.
They're part of what makes this function.
But if they understand how it works, they can more easily become part of it.
We need civic and political leaders at every level to take up the notion of civic education and make it a priority for every student in this country.
It really is the key to keeping going in this country in the right direction.
We need teachers to consider the resources and to expand on their methods of educating young people about our government works and how their participation as citizens will be critical throughout their lives.
Good evening.
Each year, the Carl and Susan Bulch Prize for the Rule of Law is awarded to an individual or an organization that has demonstrated extraordinary dedication to the rule of law and advancing rule of law principles around the world.
Through this prize, we draw attention to the hard work that must be done to protect and fortify the constitutional structures and safeguards that undergird a free society.
This is the mission of the Bolsch Judicial Institute, to strengthen and support the rule of law, to defend judicial independence, and study ways to improve the law in our courts, all as a means to better the human condition.
The Institute builds on Duke Law School's strong and long-standing ties to the judiciary and the work of our extraordinary faculty.
Our work is both practical as well as scholarly, and it's an example of how we at Duke can make a difference by bringing together the generosity and vision of philanthropists like Carl and Susan, the curiosity and interests of our faculty and students, and the leadership of people like you who help bring the academy, the real world, together to achieve meaningful results.
The recipients of the Bulch Prize reflect this same creativity and commitment to improving society through the rule of law.
Associate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy was the recipient of the first Bulch Prize in 2019.
And if you look at your programs at the front, you'll see he is succeeded by an incredibly distinguished list of judges and an organization.
Today, we are immensely honored to add the late Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor to that list.
Justice O'Connor was an extraordinary public servant, a lawyer, a state legislator, a judge, and of course the first woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court.
Tonight, we particularly honor her post-retirement work that was the capstone of a life dedicated to advancing and protecting the rule of law.
Justice O'Connor realized better than most of us that without a civically informed public, the rule of law cannot thrive.
And in order for the public to have faith in our judicial system, which itself is essential to maintaining our democratic form of government, people must first understand how the three branches of government work together.
So, in 2006, she launched the civics education movement.
Since that time, it has engaged millions of young people and adults in learning about America's founding principles and government institutions.
Through iCivics, the nonprofit organization she founded in 2009 to provide free civics resources for students, teachers, and families, Justice O'Connor revolutionized the teaching of civics for students of all ages.
iCivics now reaches nearly 10 million students annually with an array of games, lesson plans, stories, and videos.
We are pleased to have Molly Morrison, the Chief Development Officer of iCivics with us this evening and to recognize the outstanding work that iCivics continues to do in educating young people and inspiring and leading a national coalition of civic education organizations that are carrying Justice O'Connor's vision forward.
We are so proud to honor Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's lifetime devotion to advancing and protecting the rule of law, both as a political and judicial leader and as the architect of a renewal of civics education within our country.
And so it's with great pleasure that I ask her son, Mr. Scott O'Connor, to come forward and accept this prize on her behalf and then to share some remarks about her remarkably inspirational life.
Scott, can we get you to come forward?
Thanks to Paul Grimm, Melinda Myers-Bahn, and Anne Yandian of the Bolch Institute for carrying on the work here, the importance of which is fully appreciated by too few Americans.
I was delighted to learn that Paul had experience as a JAG officer, just like my dad did, with some time near where mom and dad lived together in post-war Germany, almost at the same time when he was very young.
Terrific coincidence there.
Our deepest thanks from the O'Connor family go to Susan and Carl Bulch.
The description of the Bulch Institute and its goals appears to me as having possibly actually been written by mom as her dream for a legacy institute to carry on her most important interests.
Your gift, creating the Institute, was made the same year that mom's dementia caused her to withdraw from the public eye.
Otherwise, she would have happily traveled to Durham to meet you and thank you personally for what you're doing.
I'm honored to accept the award for her.
Thanks to Chief Justice John Roberts, who happens to be here tonight.
The current court term has been unusually quiet and uninteresting, leaving him with plenty of leisure time for travels, right?
All right, we'll move on from that.
We won't answer that one.
Rhetorical question: The chief was gracious in hosting mom's lying in repose ceremony at the court in December and giving a beautiful, heartfelt eulogy the following day at National Cathedral.
Our family finished that week in December knowing that mom was bid farewell in spectacular fashion with due respect for her place in history as a friend and role model to many here and abroad.
Others tonight have already addressed mom's stunning success with iCivics.
I wanted to add to the record on a couple of other topics.
Very briefly, on my role in all of this, is that when mom left the court in 2006, I told her that if she were to go on the rubber chicken circuit giving speeches for money, I could make a very comfortable living as her agent.
We both laughed, knowing the answer.
She said that doing so would diminish both her own legacy and that of the court itself.
She had no idea then of iCivics and where that would lead her and our country.
So she made a very wise choice there at that fork in the road.
And I want to emphasize, most of you probably would just assume this, but the rest of America doesn't know this about mom.
She never took a dime from iCivics.
She has 10 million customers a year.
That's a big business.
She wasn't interested in being paid.
She did it because it was the right thing to do.
And that's how she was wired.
None of the stuff she ever did was for the money.
It was because it was the right thing to do.
So on mom's years in the court and well into her retirement, more than any other person, she carried the message here and abroad that we need to treasure the rights that are guaranteed by our Constitution and recognize that judicial independence and the rule of law are, in her words, tremendously hard to create and easier than most people imagine to damage or destroy.
For years, we marveled at the time and energy she was willing to spend doing whatever she could to help both established and emerging democracies.
Her travel and efforts were legendary.
Many know that she spoke in all 50 states here, but those speeches spanned the globe.
Why did she give so much and how was she able to do it?
It wasn't required by her job on the court.
She did not benefit financially.
She didn't do it for the pleasure of the travel.
Her trips were often physically and emotionally demanding.
She did all of it to further her deeply held belief that we are entitled to be governed by a system of democratically enacted laws that are applied fairly, uniformly, and transparently by impartial courts.
Much of this work was done under the auspices of the American Bar Association's Central and Eastern European Law Initiative, SEALI, which began after the breakup of the Soviet Union, and those satellite countries had to create new legal systems outside of the communist regime.
Sealy is now renamed the Rule of Law Initiative.
Mom was the very first outside board member when the Bar Association launched the project.
The man who had the task of recruiting a board thought that if mom, who was, and he was a partner of dad's at Miller and Chevalier in Washington, so he had an in.
He thought if he could get mom, other board members would follow.
So mom understood that, said yes.
She never missed a meeting in about 20 years, whether in the U.S. or in-country, overseas in Eastern Europe.
Speaking in 1997 at one of the Sealy events, she described in her usual, clear style, just what countries need to construct a system based on the rule of law.
There must be guarantees that action cannot be taken by a government against its citizens except on the basis of clear laws properly adopted and publicly available.
Provision must be made for free and fair elections of legislators and leaders.
A wall of legal protection must be built to allow citizens to live, to speak, to worship, to work, and to travel as they see fit without fear of the state.
The legal rights of citizens must be enforceable in fair and competent courts of law.
This message wasn't new, but the fact that the message came from her made a difference.
Of course, her position mattered.
She was a justice on the United States Supreme Court.
But she brought more than just the title.
She brought her sincere, deeply held belief in the importance of the rule of law, judicial independence, and their impact on human rights.
It was apparent to anyone who spoke with her that it was a position based on principle and not a position taken for personal or political gain.
Equally important to her effectiveness was her unique ability to establish real connections with those whom she met.
Lisa touched on this.
Her impact depended as much on her personal warmth and ability to relate to others as on her professional expertise.
She traveled not to lecture, but to discuss and learn together.
During meetings, she listened intently, questioned effectively, took copious notes, and gave advice, not directives.
She understood that the judicial approach and practices that work best here in the U.S. may not be the best for others.
And she conveyed that understanding and its acceptance.
Some of you may have been present during her meetings with colleagues and leaders in other countries.
And you know that as the discussion went on, it became a real exchange among colleagues, not a lecture from the visitor from the U.S. Supreme Court.
Her meetings with others were as impactful for her as for others in the meetings.
Many colleagues recall speaking with her on occasions after she'd been to an emergent democracy and came back home.
In describing these trips, she would focus not on what she had done, but on the amazing bravery and dedication of those with whom she met.
She marveled at the willingness of judges and those supporting an independent judiciary to put their reputations and livelihoods, sometimes their own lives, on the line for beliefs that had not yet taken root or been put into practice in their countries.
Comments she made about these meetings reflected both her humility and her deep understanding of the challenges faced by the people with whom she met.
And it's only fair to note that she did personally gain in one way.
She came back from each country with a wealth of enhanced knowledge about the country, its economy, and its people.
And if you knew her and her insatiable curiosity for learning, you appreciate that benefit that she came away with.
Through all of her optimism about teaching the importance of the rule of law, Mom was clear-eyed about the dangers from those who would prefer a world free of such restrictions imposed on their actions by a justice system that applies uniformly to everybody.
Our system of laws faces enormous pressures today.
We cannot ignore attempts to undercut the work of our courts or to challenge the enforcement of rights guaranteed by our Constitution and laws.
If, as Mom hoped, our generation will prove to be strong enough to meet today's challenges, our success will be due in no small part to the leadership she provided and to the urgency with which she conveyed our responsibility to protect this precious legacy.
Thank you. Good evening.
It's very special for me to be here tonight.
We honor Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, whom I knew well and admired so much.
And I have the privilege of introducing our next speaker, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., for whom I also have great admiration and affection.
Jane Roberts is here with the Chief.
A warm welcome to Duke.
Chief Justice Roberts grew up in Indiana.
He received an AB from Harvard College and a JD from Harvard Law School.
I like to think that I first met the Chief Justice when he was an undergraduate because I was one of two graduate student teaching fellows in a course that he took on modern English history.
There's a 50% chance that I graded your blue book, Chief.
He was a law clerk for Judge Henry J. Friendly and then for then Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist.
After these terrific clerkships, Chief Justice Roberts embarked on a long and distinguished career in public service and at the Supreme Court bar, culminating in his appointments first to the D.C. Circuit in 2003 and then as the 17th Chief Justice of the United States in September 2005.
Following the Chief Justice, Susan Bass Bulch, the co-founder of the Bulch Judicial Institute here at Duke, will offer closing remarks.
Chief Justice Roberts.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, David, for that kind introduction, and congratulations to Duke and the Bulch Judicial Institute for awarding the Bulch Prize for the Rule of Law to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
I met Justice O'Connor 43 years ago at the Department of Justice, where I played a very minor role in helping her prepare for her confirmation hearings to join the Supreme Court.
She was on the bench for every one of my Supreme Court arguments, occasionally showing little regard for all that I had done to get her there.
And later, we sat next to each other on the bench for what was for me a very special six months we served together on the court.
And I can say with absolute certainty what Justice O'Connor would have told me about speaking here tonight.
Keep it short.
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.
Now that was a perfect fit because Sandra Day O'Connor's personality and disposition was to be out there in the world engaging with all that was there.
It's just that in 1981 that world became a lot bigger.
But instead of just telling you about what all that meant, let me show you.
Born in 1930, Sandra Day O'Connor grew up on the Lazy Bee Ranch in Arizona.
She went to Stanford for college.
Here she is as an undergraduate in 1950.
She enrolled in law school starting that same year and became a member of the Law Review.
You can easily pick her out.
Of the two women in the class, she's the one on the right.
Here's another photo from her law school days at a 1951 moot court competition.
She's the only woman in this picture.
Next to her is classmate William H. Rehnquist, who was, of course, to become her colleague on the Supreme Court many years later.
Now, the gentleman at the podium won the Moot Court competition, beating Rehnquist and O'Connor, but he did not become a Supreme Court justice.
46 years later, Moot Court also rans Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice O'Connor presided together over a later moot court at Stanford Law School.
Now, for the law school students here, let me assure you that Justice O'Connor's expression is not a look you want to see from counsel table.
The future Justice O'Connor became an unpaid assistant county attorney and then followed her husband John O'Connor to Germany during his Army posting.
They made a splash on the evening social circuit and as lawyers on their return to Phoenix.
She was appointed to the Arizona State Senate in 1969 and won election and then re-election.
She became the first woman majority leader in any state senate across the country.
Then she became a judge in 1975.
Here she is upon her confirmation to become a judge on the Arizona Court of Appeals just four years later.
Now that summer, John and Sandra helped host then Chief Justice Warren Berger when he visited Phoenix and she was captured in this famous picture on a houseboat on Lake Powell two years before they became colleagues.
Now Justice O'Connor looks very happy and there are many pictures of her looking happy.
Chief Justice Warren Berger looks positively jolly and so far as I know this is the only picture in which he looks jolly.
You know they always used to say that Chief Justice Warren Berger looked like what a Chief Justice should look like.
And they still say it.
In 1981, President Ronald Reagan nominated Justice O'Connor to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
To help with the confirmation process, the Attorney General convened a team of assistants.
This photo was taken in the Attorney General's conference room.
That's Jean Smith, wife of Attorney General William French Smith and a fellow Stanford grad, by her side.
On the bottom left there, well, as you can see, I haven't aged a day in the intervening 43 years.
Now next to me is Bob McConnell, who was the Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs.
I cannot identify the person across from me in the light suit, but I assume he was from the Public Affairs Office.
No lawyer could have gotten away with that suit in Justice Department, in the Justice Department those days.
Now on September 25th, 1981, Judge O'Connor became Justice O'Connor.
The country got used to seeing her at work.
There she is in a group photo.
Again, if you need any help, that's Justice O'Connor in the top right.
Here's another picture of her at work at her desk on the first Monday of October in her first term.
You can't see it here, but we had zoomed in on that book in the past in the back, and you know this is her first day on the Supreme Court because what it says on that spine is guide to the Supreme Court.
But she learned very quickly all that it had to tell.
Here she is typing away at one of the newfangled computers.
The size of the machine should give you some idea of what year we're talking about.
But the enduring public image of Justice O'Connor is not merely in a robe and not merely in the Supreme Court building.
Here she is back at the ranch on horseback, white water rafting with her clerks.
Now, by way of comparison, you've heard mentioned that they certainly toured and looked at the cherry blossoms.
That's all I did with my clerks as far as extracurricular activities.
There is no white water rafting involved with any of the other justices, as far as I can tell.
Now, here are Sandra and John O'Connor taking the field at the Baltimore Orioles' Camden Yards.
And here they are at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, just after she tossed the coin as Grand Marshal of the 117th Rose Bowl Parade.
Here's Justice O'Connor fly fishing in Alaska.
She and the guide pictured with her each deployed bear spray to ward off the grizzly in the background.
This is what they mean when they tell you, walk away calmly from the bear.
She seems completely unflappable, or perhaps she was just confident that she could, even in her late 70s, outrun the guide.
She hobnobbed with presidents, including the one who nominated her.
And in scanning this photo for tonight, we notice an inscription on the back.
It said, Dear Justice Sandra, it was a happy New Year's Eve there in the desert.
Best regards, Ronald Reagan.
She knew Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush as well.
Barack Obama presented her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, saying, Sandra Day O'Connor is like the pilgrim in the poem she sometimes quotes, who has forged a new trail and built a bridge behind her for all young women to follow.
More generally, she was, as has been said, out there doing things with Margaret Thatcher, the most powerful woman in America meets the most powerful woman in Great Britain.
That's Chief Justice Warren Berger on the left, looking happy enough, but certainly not jolly.
And with Queen Elizabeth II and Vice President Dick Cheney.
Here she is with the Dalai Lama.
That's her longtime colleague, Justice Stephen Breyer, in the forefront.
With Wynton Marsalis for a civics conversation called Let Freedom Swing.
Now I'm not sure who she's trying to silence there.
Probably everyone, and they probably complied.
Here she is with Charles Barclay in his Phoenix Sundays.
Though I have to say, Charles Sir Charles seems a bit unsure about whether to return the high five or not.
Here she is with Justice Breyer at a performance of King John at the Shakespeare Theater.
Justice Breyer did not wear that outfit when he met the Dalai Lama.
And I have no idea what it signifies, but I'm certainly going to tell Justice Breyer I shared it with everybody here.
Here is Justice O'Connor showing a visiting Chief Justice from China, the Lincoln Memorial, having insisted that her diplomatic guests needed to see it to understand our country and that she needed to take him there right away.
Here she is explaining government to the viewing public through David Letterman.
But of course, what made Justice O'Connor so special was that she had time for others, regardless of whether they were famous.
Here she is with her hand on the shoulder of a young girl working on a computer.
Now, if you remember the picture earlier of Justice O'Connor working at the computer, the opportunities for the young girl in the picture had changed just as much in the intervening years as technology, in no small part due to the woman standing behind her.
Of all the pictures we looked at, this is very much my favorite.
When have you ever seen such genuine smiles on people in a picture?
And the symbolism of Justice O'Connor's hand on the girl's shoulder as she discovers all that the computer has to offer is really heart-moving.
As Justice O'Connor told her sons, our purpose in life is to help others along the way.
Justice O'Connor retired as an active justice in 2006, but she really just kept going.
She flew the flag by sitting on federal courts around the country to an extent few justices have since the earliest days of the Republic.
She traveled the world to inspire others.
She expanded her reach by going digital and launching iCivics in 2009, as you have heard, observing that, quote, the practice of democracy is not passed down through the gene pool.
It must be taught and learned by each new generation.
Today, the Bolch Prize is so fittingly bestowed on Justice O'Connor because she lived so much of her life getting that done.
Now, as we're about to sit down and have a meal together in celebration of her life's work, I have one more observation.
During her service, she hosted all kinds of events in the Supreme Court building.
She would bring people together by force of personality.
If you were invited to a Justice O'Connor event and didn't reply, you could expect a terse call insisting on an explanation.
And at the roundtables that would ordinarily seat eight and sometimes ten at the court, she would insist on squeezing 11 guests.
There was no accident, nor for want of tables.
She thought it was important for everyone to literally rub elbows with others and get over themselves.
A few more spilled wine glasses, perhaps, but worth it.
Sandra Day O'Connor expanded the public image of what it meant to look like a judge.
She sounded the alarm about the growing lack of appreciation of what it means to be a citizen.
She launched iCivics to do something about that.
I'd like to end with just one more set of photographs from last December as Justice O'Connor came home to the court for the final time in the traditional lying-in-repose ceremony we hold to remember a justice who has passed.
In recognizing Justice O'Connor's contributions to our country, I would also like to express appreciation for the Justice's sons, Scott, Brian, and Jay, their wives, and their children.
The O'Connor brothers gave so much of their mother to public service during her lifetime.
They have been generous again in facilitating public memorials so that we could all honor what Justice O'Connor has meant to the country.
And I am so glad that Scott O'Connor has accepted the prize today.
Scott and Joni, you have our admiration and our thanks.
Thank you all very much.
Next week, we'll bring you live oral argument from the Supreme Court starting Monday when the justices consider a case regarding the Food and Drug Administration's rejection of flavored vape products amid concerns about underage smoking.
That's live at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN.
Then later in the week, there's a case questioning the constitutionality of a Tennessee ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors.
You can follow that live Wednesday at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 3.
And a reminder, these oral arguments are also available on our free mobile video app, C-SPANNOW, or online at c-span.org.
According to Brown University professor Corey Brettsnyder, the following presidents in history threatened democracy.
Here are his words from the introduction of his book, The Presidents and the People.
Quote, John Adams waged war on the national press, prosecuting as many as 126 who dared criticize him.
James Buchanan colluded with the Supreme Court to deny constitutional personhood to African Americans.
Andrew Johnson urged violence against his political opponents.
Woodrow Wilson nationalized Jim Crow by segregating the federal government.
And finally, Richard Nixon committed criminal acts ordering the Watergate break-in.
Corey Bretschnider teaches constitutional law and politics at his Providence, Rhode Island-based Brown University.
Brown University professor Corey Bretschneider with his book, The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It on this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host Brian Lamb.
BookNotes Plus is available on the C-SPAN Now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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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.
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, with 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 mom the bus 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 Laboy is the mother of Tiana LaBoy, 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. Umberger, 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 18, 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 given 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 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?
When 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 proceeded 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 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. LeBoie.
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?
MS. 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 hold on to.
Ms. LaBoy, 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 ignore 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 already.
Yeah, they were very insensitive.
They made jokes.
She took her first swim.
After your granddaughter had been pushed 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's constitutional guarantee that would not happen.