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In a 12-2 vote, the Council rejected petitioners’ attempt to undo a 2021 voter referendum that outlawed the use of solitary confinement and leg shackles in the County Jail. We applaud the Abolitionist Law Center’s leadership in securing this important victory. Tara, nobody should be forced to labor or give birth while physically restrained. About 40 states, including Pennsylvania, have laws on the books that limit the use of restraints on incarcerated pregnant people, but it still occurs in prisons and jails. |
The Allegheny County Council overwhelmingly defeated a petition to reinstate the use of leg shackles on pregnant people by Allegheny County Jail corrections officers.|
WLP strongly supported Pennsylvania’s 2010 Healthy Birth for Incarcerated Women Act, which banned the shackling of incarcerated pregnant women in transit to medical facilities, during labor, and for some time after labor. At the time, Pennsylvania was only the eighth state to ban the shackling of inmates during childbirth via statute. In 2023, the legislature expanded the law to include incarcerated pregnant juveniles and provide up to three days of post-delivery bonding time between a mother and newborn child. We’ve continued to defend the rights of incarcerated pregnant people. In 2011, WLP acted as co-counsel in a civil rights lawsuit by a former prisoner who was shackled while giving birth to her baby en route to a hospital. The shackling of pregnant people is a barbaric practice that can cause serious injury during pregnancy, labor, delivery, and postpartum recovery. The practice is strongly opposed by medical experts, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association. With your support, we’ll continue to defend and advance the rights of all pregnant people in the Commonwealth. |
