New CA Law Provides Support for Pregnancy in Prisons

By Kennedy Meeks

Pregnant inmates may soon have the option for a support person with them during birth and the ability to choose from a midwife, physician, nurse practitioner, or physician’s assistant for treatment.

Governor Newsom signed Assembly Bill 732, which was authored by Assemblymember Rob Bonta (D-Oakland), into law this September. This bill will help improve the treatment of pregnant inmates in California state prisons and county jails, as well as provide more services for reproductive health.

“It was about human rights, it was about women’s rights, it’s about civil rights, and about having the fair, just, compassionate, and humane society that we want,” Bonta said.

Some see AB 732 as progress to improve an outdated system to finally reflect current prison demographics.

“[It] reflects an idea of a system that was built to house single men, never having been rethought for what it looks like to be in a body that menstruates, what does it look like to be a body that might be pregnant,” Michelle Oberman, Criminal and Health Law Professor at Santa Clara University, said.

AB 732 will give pregnant inmates options when it comes to who will be providing their medical services.

“The thing that...would be most impactful would be that there’s a sense of empowerment, a sense of having choices in a situation whereby definition you have so little control,” Oberman said.

This bill will also provide pregnant inmates access to prenatal services, an important part of the bill when there are high rates of miscarriage for incarcerated pregnant women. Currently, there is no standardization in California prisons and county jails when it comes to services for pregnant inmates.

“When it came to prenatal care, postpartum care, standards and conditions of appropriate health care during pregnancy we were not doing nearly enough,” Bonta said. “These are folks who have no other access to care. If you’re not going to give it to them, how else are they going to get it?”

An example of this lack of treatment and standards can be seen in the class action suit on behalf of female inmates from the Santa Rita Jail in Alameda County. The lawsuit alleges instances where inmates were forced to have abortions and that in the jail, a female inmate gave birth alone in solitary confinement.

Previous policies addressing pregnant inmates “have been a response to stories of outrageous violations of human rights,” Oberman said.

Oberman said that this bill, however, feels different than past reforms. She said lawmakers are thinking about the things pregnant people need and trying to provide more holistic care.

“Rather than doing these one-offs... it feels like they’re actually trying to build a systemic response that actually poses the possibility of better outcomes for the pregnant people and for their kids,” Oberman said.

Some of the other items in AB 732 include appropriate bunk assignments for pregnancy, access to postpartum services up to 12 weeks after giving birth, access to community- based programs, prohibition of the use of tasers, pepper spray, and other chemical weapons on incarcerated pregnant persons, and greater access to menstrual products.

This bill has the support of organizations such as ACLU of California, Riverside Sheriffs' Association, and was sponsored by Women’s Policy Institute, The Women’s Foundation of California. Another reason why it has garnered so much support could be the fact that the bill is good economic policy.

“[The bill] is fiscally conservative in that . . . ...when you don’t get prenatal care . . . you end up running up a huge bill because things go wrong...so prenatal care is the dollar so wisely spent.” according to Oberman.

However, the California State Sheriffs Association (CSSA) opposed the final version of the bill.

“The concerns that the sheriffs noted about the bill was that generally, it mandated, without any funding from the state, some pretty specific and inflexible and potentially costly prenatal and postpartum care for pregnant county jail inmates,” Cory Salzillo, CSSA Legislative Director, said.

Salzillo said that the CSSA was also worried about the different requirements of the bill. In particular, Salzillo expressed concern about certain procedural changes.

“Overall, [the] concern is that the bill set pretty rigorous treatment schedules and specifications into statute,” Salzillo said.

Bonta is confident though, that California will fund these state-mandated changes.

“We spent over a year talking about how this was going to be funded, reducing it so that it was manageable for the state’s coffers to pay for these changes,” Bonta said.

Bonta also said putting procedural specifications into the statute would ensure that they are implemented consistently.

“The most important thing is that we see our incarcerated pregnant Californian inmates. We care and we believe that you deserve a level of respect, dignity, and compassionate humanity,” Bonta said.

(Editor's Note: This article was originally published in the November 2020 [Volume 51, Issue 2] edition of The Advocate.)