Giving birth to a child is undoubtedly one of the happiest moments in a woman’s life…but could you imagine that moment while being handcuffed to a hospital bed as a sheriff watches on?
We’ve covered the ongoing work of Angela Stanton previously, and according to the Washington Examiner, Stanton is doing everything she can to help prevent women who incarcerated from going through the horrible circumstances that she did while doing doing time for a non-violent crime.
“That was the most humiliating and degrading experience I’ve ever had in my life, even as a victim of child sexual assault,” said Stanton of her personal experience she gave her baby to her mother 24 hours later, and as she grieved the separation, her body went through the same post-pregnancy experiences all women in that situation face. But she did so in a cell, without a breast pump to relieve the pain in her chest, and relying on T-shirts she kept having to hand wash because the corrections facility would provide no more than three pads.
Stanton’s experience, from 2004, is similar to that faced by pregnant women in prisons and jails across the country. Openly sharing such stories has generated urgency for criminal justice reform among policymakers, and advocates are hopeful about a bill addressing some of these problems that is advocated by President Trump, known as the First Step Act.
The legislation would prohibit pregnant women from being shackled and would ensure all people who are incarcerated are placed closer to family, a help to women such as Stanton who give birth and are separated from their newborns.
Stanton, who has shared her story in her book Life of a Real Housewife, has spoken at White House summits to advocate for criminal justice reform, working alongside evangelical leader Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King Jr.
As the founder of the American King Foundation, she and other groups have for years tried to reduce the number of people who are serving lengthy sentences for nonviolent crimes, and discussing the treatment of pregnant women has provided one of the avenues for proceeding in a bipartisan manner on Capitol Hill.
“Talking about how women are being treated inside has built a lot of consensus,” said Jessica Jackson Sloan, national director and co-founder at #cut50, a bipartisan advocacy group urging for corrections reforms. “It’s instant common ground. Neither party thinks we should be shackling pregnant women in prisons and jail. That’s just barbaric.”
Get the FULL story as told by the Washington Examiner, here.
