GIVING BIRTH IN CHAINS

Wouldn't it be very difficult, if not impossible, to give birth while your feet are shackled together?

Men are not shackled to a bed when they are having treatments done.
Just an officer in the room and outside if necessary.

seaglass wrote:

It should not take a genius to see that chaining a woman's feet together or handcuffing her arm and leg to the side a bed is not a smart thing to do during labor or childbirth.

Can I be the idiot and ask what could happen?

Court papers in a lawsuit filed in Arkansas claim that because of resistance by the corrections guard, a mother-to-be remained shackled until she had suffered nerve damage and a permanent back injury.

Eryemil wrote:

Does it warrant this fishin'? I mean, why not just have a couple of guards there at all times? Or are the big bad guards too squeamish to watch a woman giving birth?

It isn't a matter of the guards being squeamish. Doctors and nurses tend to get a little squeamish when their patient grabs a scalpel and starts swinging it at anyone nearby. Then, of course, they sue the state for not protecting them from their patients.

Quote:

There is absolutely no excuse for this draconian law.

I suspect you have absolutely NO experience to draw from to reach this conclusion.

The practice is completely prohibited in several states

Bella Dea wrote:

seaglass wrote:

It should not take a genius to see that chaining a woman's feet together or handcuffing her arm and leg to the side a bed is not a smart thing to do during labor or childbirth.

Can I be the idiot and ask what could happen?

Well, one example was right there in the short article:

Quote:

Court papers in a lawsuit filed in Arkansas claim that because of resistance by the corrections guard, a mother-to-be remained shackled until she had suffered nerve damage and a permanent back injury.

fishin' first wrote:

Eryemil wrote:

Does it warrant this fishin'? I mean, why not just have a couple of guards there at all times? Or are the big bad guards too squeamish to watch a woman giving birth?

It isn't a matter of the guards being squeamish. Doctors and nurses tend to get a little squeamish when their patient grabs a scalpel and starts swinging it at anyone nearby. Then, of course, they sue the state for not protecting them from their patients.

Quote:

There is absolutely no excuse for this draconian law.

I suspect you have absolutely NO experience to draw from to reach this conclusion.

fishin' then wrote:

The practice is completely prohibited in several states

OK, count me confused here.

First, you are telling Eryemil that there's a very real danger that these rules are there to prevent - for one, the danger of the woman in childbirth grabbing a scalpel and threatening the currounding doctors (in order to make her get away, while giving birth?). Thus, you're telling him, it's way too big a jump to call these measures draconic.

Then, right after, you're telling Walter that this very practice is actually completely prohibited in several states.

So - if it is prohibited in several states - then apparently things can be done without the shackles, right? Those states then apparently have found alternative ways to deal with the looming danger, no? And the lawmakers from those states, anyway, then do consider these measure to be too draconic, right?

I want to know why people think a laboring woman will run?

Men are not shackled to a bed when they are having treatments done.

birth isnt a garden party i tell you what.

that is why I wonder where the ' she might escape' mentality comes from.

If you have a baby coming out of your crotch
the LAST thing you are thinking of , or even capable of, is running away.

If one location has proper facilities for a woman to give birth where they can do so without needing any restraints - more power to them. But that doens't mean that every other jail/prison in the country has the same sort of facilities and if the only way they can protect the medical staff is to use restraints then so be it.

Maybe they should just set up a high security room for these chick to be in from the monent they leave their cell to the moment they are taken back.

Then there would only be a need for shackles when people are coming and going. Ie, bringing food, water, medical supplies, whatever.

Well, I think that if facilities for something as basic as a female prison giving birth without being shackled are missing, there is something seriously wrong. Thats the short answer.

I mean, what you're saying here does imply, after all, that this practice is not something that is intrinsically necessary, but something that becomes necessary if "proper facilities" are missing. So more power to Amnesty for highlighting the lack of those - they're basic enough. Prisoners have done something wrong - thats why they're doing time - but they're still humans. And the pain involved in a measure as primitive as being shackled while giving birth is an additional punishment that is way beyond what the judge gave them in accordance to what they did.