This article was published in partnership with Bloomberg Law.
Lawmakers around the country, moved by harrowing stories of pregnancies in jail, are calling for new measures that make sure women and babies get the medical help they need.
Officials in Congress and in states from Pennsylvania to California said they were alarmed by a Bloomberg Law/NBC News investigation detailing systemic failures that allow vulnerable women to give birth in jail cells — sometimes with deadly results.
The proposals aim to keep pregnant women out of jail, monitor the cases of those who do get locked up, and get them proper health care.
“The allegations are really, truly, gutting,” said Pennsylvania state Sen. Amanda Cappelletti, a Democrat, who is proposing legislation in her state after reading the investigation.
Bloomberg Law and NBC News found more than 50 women across the U.S. who said they endured horrific endings to their pregnancies while in jail. The accounts included miscarriages, stillbirths and delivering babies who lived only days. Most of the women were locked up for petty crimes and held because they could not pay bail fees as low as $125. Some gave birth alone on jail cell toilets or bled for days before they received proper health care. Two pregnant women died in their cells.
In three cases in Pennsylvania, women said they endured dangerous pregnancy complications without adequate medical care.
Cappelletti said the issue is “very personal.” She has suffered three miscarriages and is expecting her second child in the spring.
“You think about what those poor individuals went through and the state of mind that they must be in even today,” she said.
She is writing a bill that would allow pregnant women accused of nonviolent offenses to stay out of jail while they await trial.
Keeping pregnant women out of jail is what women’s health advocates and some law enforcement officials say is the clearest solution to the problem. While some states have taken steps in this direction, such reforms remain rare. How often pregnant women are jailed is unknown because the government does not comprehensively track pregnancies in local jails. There is no nationwide requirement that jails track when detainees are pregnant — or report when a baby dies after being born behind bars. At least 22 states don’t track pregnancy outcomes in jail, the investigation found.
“We need to encourage life and help promote life, so this is a good reminder for all of us that even for women who are incarcerated we should make sure the circumstances they find themselves in are positive,” said Kentucky state Sen. Julie Raque Adams, a Republican who has sponsored measures that sought to improve the treatment of incarcerated pregnant women.
An attempt to close the gap is underway in Congress, where Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, D-Calif., has been trying since 2023 to pass a bill to improve health care for incarcerated women. She plans to introduce a new version of her Pregnant Women in Custody Act next month.
The bill would require the federal government to collect data on pregnancies in jails, evaluate local and state policies and teach corrections staff about the risks faced by pregnant detainees and prisoners. It would also require the federal Bureau of Prisons to provide special care to pregnant inmates and curtail the use of restrictive housing at federal facilities and immigration detention centers.
“They’re in the custody of the government, and we have a responsibility to make sure people aren’t leaving our care in worse shape than when they came in,” Kamlager-Dove said. “There is no reason I should ever read a story about a baby who was born in a toilet of a jail cell.”
