It reported that Shawanna Nelson, 30, a prisoner at the McPherson Unit in Newport, Arkansas, had been in labor for more than 12 hours when she arrived at the Newport Hospital, on Sept. 20, 2003. Nelson, who was serving time for writing bad checks, had her legs shackled together and had been given nothing stronger than Tylenol all day. She “begged, according to court papers, to have the shackles removed,” the Times said. “Though her doctor and two nurses joined in the request, her lawsuit says, the guard in charge of her refused.”

“She was shackled all through labor,” Nelson’s lawyer told the Times. “The doctor who was delivering the baby made them remove the shackles for the actual delivery at the very end.”

The experience of giving birth without anesthesia while largely immobilized has left Nelson with lasting back pain and damage to her sciatic nerve, according to her lawsuit against prison officials and a private company, Correctional Medical Services.

The practice of shackling prisoners who are in labor is common, the Times said. Only two states, California and Illinois, have laws forbidding it.

Prison officials are quick to rationalize the brutal practice. “Though these are pregnant women,” Dina Tyler, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Corrections, told the Times, “they are still convicted felons, and sometimes violent in nature. There have been instances when we’ve had a female inmate try to hurt hospital staff during delivery.”

Other state officials claim such restraints are needed because the prisoners may try to escape during labor. “You can’t convince me that it’s ever really happened,” Dee Ann Newell, who has taught parental care classes for women prisoners in Arkansas, told the Times. “You certainly wouldn’t get far.”

About 5 percent of women reportedly arrive pregnant in jail, and some 2,000 babies are born to U.S. prisoners annually.  
 
 
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