News & Politics
The Court Sentences You To Give Birth in Jail
Judges treat pregnant women like children.
Quinta Tuleh had been in a Maine county jail for 114 days when she went before federal Judge John Woodcock for sentencing in May. Tuleh, 28, traveled legally to the United States from her native Cameroon on a tourist visa in September but ran afoul of immigration authorities when she was caught in January with fake working papers. “I’m going to do things a little backwards here,” Woodcock told Tuleh at her sentencing, after she pleaded guilty. “Ordinarily, I would give you what is called a time-served sentence, and … your time in prison would effectively end today,” Woodcock said. Federal guidelines recommended a sentence of zero to six months.
But in jail, Tuleh had learned she was pregnant. She’d also found out she was infected with HIV. (The prevalence of the virus is eight times higher in Cameroon than in the United States.) Woodcock went on: “I’m inclined to keep you in jail, given your medical condition and the medical condition for your child, to prevent your child from being born HIV positive.”
Antiretroviral medication, which Tuleh would have access to in jail, can drastically reduce the rate of mother-to-child transmission. And so Woodcock sentenced Tuleh to 238 days—almost eight months—to ensure she would give birth while she was in jail. In other words, the judge kept Tuleh locked up not for her crime, but for her status as pregnant and HIV-positive.
In states across the country—Maryland, New Mexico, Arizona, Kentucky—women in the last decade have been charged with crimes like reckless endangerment for using illegal drugs during their pregnancies. This year, a Florida woman was court-ordered to stay in the hospital against her will when she told her doctor that she could not follow his advice to stay on bed rest. Along with Tuleh’s case, these examples illustrate a disturbing tendency in law enforcement to sidestep pregnant women's rights in order to protect the fetuses they're carrying.
State laws passed over the last few decades have chipped away at the underpinnings for legal abortion by treating a fetus like a person in certain ways. In many states, for example, a driver who hits a pregnant woman and hurts or kills her fetus can be charged twice. But this is different than using the rights of a fetus rights against its mother, says Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, staff attorney for the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project and one of Tuleh’s lawyers. In fact, dating back to Roe v. Wade in 1973, the courts have ruled pretty consistently that the Constitution protects a woman’s right to privacy and autonomy, whether or not she is pregnant. For example, in 2006, Maryland’s highest court overturned the child endangerment convictions of two women who had used cocaine during their pregnancies; if prosecutors’ reasoning was followed to its logical extreme, the judges wrote, the law “could well be construed to include … a whole host of intentional and conceivably reckless activity … everything from becoming (or remaining) pregnant with knowledge that the child likely will have a genetic disorder … to the continued use of legal drugs that are contraindicated during pregnancy … to exercising too much or too little.”
There is one notable exception: South Carolina allows pregnant women to be criminally prosecuted for harming their fetuses. In 1992, Cornelia Whitner was sentenced to eight years in prison for smoking crack cocaine while she was pregnant. Since the state’s Supreme Court upheld that sentence in 1997, at least two South Carolina women who used drugs during pregnancy have been prosecuted for homicide after their children were stillborn.
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Comments
The pregnant woman must get
By: abshandra | Sat, 11/21/2009 - 14:30
The pregnant woman must get the best for their health care. It is not for her health care only, but also for the baby. Yes, it bad when the baby must be born at the jail, but still, it is not the baby fault, it's her mother fault. However, I hope every babies that must be born at jail, be a good boys and girls. bankruptcy public records
Give her agood treatment
By: Pakde Cholik | Wed, 11/04/2009 - 08:03
The pregnant woman should be treated very well and give her opportunity to gives a birth safely.
Disturbing on its face, but let's get real...
By: jobiewan | Sun, 11/01/2009 - 14:58
Of course it's a horrible thing to contemplate judges jailing women for failure to treat their fetuses properly...
BUT..
Given the state of health care in this country, it is MOST likely that this poor woman would have an exceedingly difficult time getting the medications she needs to keep herself and her child healthy--if she were not cared for by the penitentiary system.
If I were her, I'd stay in jail too.
Do we know?
By: Caine | Thu, 10/29/2009 - 22:42
Do we know what she wanted? Perhaps this was something she worked out with the judge.
Birth in jail
By: BadPixie | Thu, 10/29/2009 - 18:15
I'm no felon, but these 'legal' precedents terrify me as a woman, on behalf of myself and of my friends, family and every female in this country and world. Religion aside, the law must be followed as it is written and our rights under the constitution should not be abrogated in these ways. Let's not forget that increasing numbers of pregnant women are being forced to undergo unnecessary and potentially life-threatening medical procedures 'for the safety of the baby,' that medical documentation continues to prove ineffective. The U.S. ranks lower than 20th in the world for maternal and fetal mortality and we're still falling. Part of this is due to the number of unnecessary and repeat c-sections being forced upon pregnant women.
Ladies, read everything you can get your hands on, conduct research, interview people and speak up for yourselves and your children. If you fail to do this and meekly trust that anyone behind a desk or wearing a white coat knows better than you what you need in this life, then you're no better than children. Responsibility is a heavy burden but if we don't bear it for ourselves, no one will do it for us.
Not only are increasing numbers of women's rights being increasingly invalidated while pregnant, jailed expectant mothers face horrible ordeals when it comes time to give birth. In a shocking number of cases, laboring female felons are left handcuffed to beds, unable to change position at all during labor--and subjected to far worse by the hospital staff entrusted to 'care' for them. Most people wouldn't subject animals to this level of callous disregard for comfort and safety but it happens all of the time to women behind bars. Let's not even get into what happens after the baby is born...
Sometimes people make mistakes. Sometimes they learn from them and move on to make solid, honest lives for themselves. Ruining someone's life over a mistake, torturing and traumatizing them and taking away the children who give them a reason to try to grow as people, to become good citizens and stable adults, is not only counterproductive, it's cruel and inhumane.
Why?
By: nattyq80 | Thu, 10/29/2009 - 12:03
It's sad drug addicts and women like some of those cited in the article even get pregnant in the first place. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of responsible (and coupled) women can't get pregnant.
SIGH.
But, once the damage is already done, I have no problem with the courts stepping in to try and ensure the fetuses' health.
I'm sick of people acting like a fetus doesn't matter.
Imagine the courts don't do what they can to force a pregnant drug addict to get proper prenatal care.
Suppose the baby comes out deformed, mentally retarded, or brain damaged? Did it not deserve the best start possible, or does its drug-addled mother's "autonomy" come first?
The mother SHOULD be treated like a child because she's proven she's incapable of acting like an adult and thinking of someone other than herself.
I'm sorry, a pregnant woman's body is growing a human being who will become part of society someday. Therefore, society has a vested interest in that fetus/child's health.
It's not paternalistic.
Not all pregnant women are mentally sound or have the resources to properly care for the person their body is growing, despite what NOW and other feminist organizations would have you believe.
And that's just the unfortunate reality of life.
Paternalism? BS Claim from an Extremist
By: Usama3 | Thu, 10/29/2009 - 05:06
So a fetus does not exist until its born and the mother can engage in reckless, behavior which will undoubtably harm the child for the rest of its life just because she has a degree of autonomy over her body?
The reality is: the degree of autonomy is limited, not absolute. She cannot voluntarily dismember her body- the state would step in to prevent it. Likewise, the degree of autonomy is limited in leiu of the interests of the fetus, given that the fetus will have rights that cannot be oppressed by the parent to the detriment of the child, HIV is a form of oppression which the mother would encumber upon the child.
Quite frankly, secular nations like in Europe have come around to realize that the autonomy of the individual woman should be limited in several respects regarding children, including that artificial insemination is ethically restricted, as is adoption, if the prospective mother is single, without a partner. This is based on factual studies that children without 2 parents are comparable disadvantaged and that such a circumstance should not be intentionally permitted or encouraged.
Its extremism, lacking common sense, inconsistent with the vast majority of interests and studies, to assume that a woman has absolute autonomy in all regards concerning a pregnancy and fetus. One could say that its misandry to label any thoughts regarding limitations to autonomy during pregnancy as paternalism.
She wouldn't be deported. She
By: feministworkingmom | Wed, 10/28/2009 - 13:45
She wouldn't be deported. She wasn't here illegally. She was working illegally. Deportation wasn't on the table. Even if jail was her best health care option, it is still a violation of her civil and human rights, not to mention illegal, to jail her in the absence of a conviction warranting imprisonment.
jail may be her best option
By: CD | Wed, 10/28/2009 - 13:36
If the woman is facing deportation, increasing her sentence allows her to give birth with the drugs she needs. It also makes her child a US citizen.
The mother's first choice would have been to live in the US and use AIDS charities to help her and her child. Is it within the judges power to delay deportation by a year (pregnancy plus healing travel arrangements)? Would she present herself for deportation at the appointed time or try to fade into the immigrant community again?
It is not clear from the article that the mother is fighting the sentence. She has already immigrated illegally so it is not unreasonable to guess that she does not want to return to Cameroon. Only she knows whether the prison she's in is preferable to the house (or homelessness) she would return to.
Glad this is getting coverage
By: pixie superhero | Wed, 10/28/2009 - 09:18
I'm happy but surprised to see doublex admitting that it's ridiculous and wrong for pregnant women to be denied choices about how to proceed with pregnancy and birth. Rachel Larimore apparently would endorse judges telling women how and where to give birth and what they must do while pregnant. It's good to see that doublex is willing to give a forum to those who know how absurd this is.