No Right to Be a Mother?

Is there a right to be a mother? Any reproductive justice advocate would give a decisive YES - reproductive justice means the right to have children, the right not to have children, and the right to parent the children we have.

Problems arise when mothers are imprisoned, far away from their children and their families. They may be sent to isolated federal prisons or locked away in jails with no ability to see their kids. Some women give birth behind bars (escorted in chains to hospitals), only to be forced to leave their newborn babies and return to prison after a few days. The conditions of imprisonment and the policies of the prison system limit women's ability to have children and to parent their own children.

As a law student involved in reproductive justice, I knew all of this before the event, "Women Prisoners: No Right to be a Mother." But the panel brought the intimate problems of being a woman prisoner to life - the panel included two women who were formally incarcerated.

One woman described the reproductive justice abuses she faced. Some issues are so basic that even reproductive justice advocates would overlook them, such as lack of access to sanitary napkins. She explained how degrading it was to be forced to ask men for pads when you were on your period. The prison would ration pads at a certain number per woman, even though some women need more than others. Then you would have to ask for more pads if you had a heavier period one month. She remembered thinking that this must be wrong - why couldn't she get sanitary pads when she needed them? She used this story to show that people on the outside do not even know what every day life is like in prison, or what female prisoners go through on a daily basis.

Professor Joan Petersilia began the talk by saying, "gender matters." Women prisoners are different than incarcerated men. Yet, prisons treat women just like men, adding a few sanitary pads into the equasion. Petersilia argued that the prison system needs to take gender differences seriously to design programs specific to female prisoners. After fighting for equality in the system, we are now asking for different treatment for female prisoners.

And some of that different impact based on gender relates to being a mother (although we should push for the right to parent for imprisoned men too). Robin Levi from Justice Now discussed her work interviewing female prisoners extensively, when they discussed the impact of prison on being a mother. Two-thirds of incarcerated women are mothers of a minor child, but children of incarcerated women often fall into the foster care system or are subject to fast-track adoption. Women in prison deal with visiting restrictions and limits on talking on the phone and writing letters.

Hamdiya Cooks, one of the formerly incarcerated women, said that she never felt like she didn't have a right to be a mother, she always thought that was a possibility with the love and support from family members and advocates to help her from the outside. One woman wrote to Justice Now that she was lucky to have a connection with her son, and grateful that he was raised to know that she was his mother - something that does not happen for most women locked away for decades.

We have to ask: are we serving women and their families by locking them up? The result is that a whole group of women are missing from their families and their communities. As Ms. Cooks said, women are attempting to be equal participants in society, but they are held back by the degrading and violating prison system. Prison conditions take away women's basic humanity. We cannot attain gender equality if we do not recognize the value of every human being.