Jailed and Pregnant: What the Roe Repeal Means for Incarcerated People
This Q&A fact sheet by Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health reports on the consequences of the Dobbs decision on incarcerated people. The content is adapted from a podcast episode featuring Carolyn Sufrin, an OB-GYN focused on reproductive health in jails and prisons and an associate professor in the School of Medicine and Bloomberg School.
Incarcerated women receive varying levels of reproductive health care. There is no single standard of care that the carceral system must provide. While some prisons and jails provide quality reproductive health care, many do not provide reproductive health care at all. Others provide care that is substandard.
This situation persists despite the 1976 Estelle v. Gamble Supreme Court case which established the right to health care for people who are incarcerated.
This variation in care provided also applies to abortion care. Some jails and prisons allow for abortion care, and others do not. For those which do allow it, it may only be within the first trimester, or the incarcerated pregnant person may be required to pay for it.
Still, many incarcerated people assume they have no right to an abortion. They are forced to carry babies to term in an oppressive system with limited prenatal care where their baby may be forcibly taken from them after birth.
Before Dobbs, they could sue a prison or jail to get an abortion. This is no longer possible. While federal prisons still allow incarcerated pregnant people to pay for access to abortions, enforcement now varies by state.
That chilling effect is going to be even worse for incarcerated individuals because they don’t have any control over their health care, and the prison or jail doesn’t have control over what happens in the hospital. So even if they want the best of care for the people in their custody, if they’re taken to a hospital that won’t do a DNC for someone who’s having a miscarriage, the prison or jail has no recourse or ability to provide that care.
SOURCE: Bloomberg School for Public Health at John Hopkins University • AUTHOR: Joshua Sharfstein • LAST UPDATED: September 21, 2022
