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Mothers from Within (Part 1)

During my detention at Rikers Island in 1988 I had to visit the doctor at East Elmhurst Hospital twice for prenatal care and each time I was shackled. I was led from the corrections van each time, attached by my chains to other women who were also going for medical visits. What should have been a happy and exciting time was, instead, an embarrassing trek through the hospital with hospital visitors and staff staring at those chains and handcuffs. Though I loved each chance I got to see my baby on the sonogram and hear her heartbeat, I dreaded the walk of shame that accompanied it.  

I went into labor early on December 23 and was taken from Rikers Island to the hospital. Although I was in active labor with extreme pains, I was still shackled for the commute, so it was very difficult for me to move around during the throes of labor. Each time the driver turned or stopped I tried to brace myself so I wouldn’t slide around and hit my belly, which was exhausting to do between labor pains. I remained shackled even when I was examined. The doctor decided that I was not ready to give birth, but the pain was extreme enough that I received an epidural in my spine. The spinal tap numbed me completely from the waist down, yet I remained shackled to the birthing bed by one hand throughout labor, in and out of consciousness. 

When I was ready to give birth, the doctor awakened me and told me it was time to start pushing. I couldn’t feel anything except the pressure of my baby’s head crowning. All of this just goes to prove that I was not a flight risk and did not need to remain shackled throughout what should have been one of the most natural and loving experiences a woman and her baby can have. Instead it became a very traumatic one. While I gave birth, the corrections officer was standing directly behind the doctor, witnessing my child’s entrance into the world of the criminal justice system. 

Throughout the next two days, while in the hospital, I remained cuffed to the bed; therefore, I needed help getting my baby into my arms for her feedings or laying her in the basinet. My brother came for a visit and was only allowed to stay for a little while, not for a regular visit like the other three mothers in my room. They, too, stared at those chains of conviction.

I’d signed up for the Nursery Program a month or so earlier, which at the time was a developing initiative at the Singer Facility. The Nursery Program screened pregnant women to determine which women would be eligible to keep their babies with them in jail until the mother's release from jail or transfer to prison. If a woman passed the interview process and was accepted into the program, (women being detained for a violent crime did not qualify) she was allowed to bring her baby back to Rikers Island with her after being released from the hospital. If the woman was sent to a prison with a similar nursery program, her child could possibly accompany her there as well.

When it was time for me to be released from the hospital to return to jail, my baby girl was snatched from my arms, placed in a bassinet and rolled away by an apathetic corrections officer. I cried and screamed for my baby and tried to tell the officer that I was supposed to take my baby back to Rikers with me. At the time, I felt that keeping my baby with me for the remaining six months of my sentence would help us to bond and keep me from returning to drug use; however, the officer did not have any paperwork for my baby and just wanted me to get dressed so I could be discharged.

The nurse witnessing this event asked the corrections officer to allow me time to hold my baby once more and say goodbye. She probably felt this would calm my hysterics, but the corrections officer refused. The officer stated that it was Christmas, and she just wanted to get home to her own family, adding that if I had really wanted to keep my baby in the first place, I would never have been in jail. 

I was returned to jail. My brother picked the baby up from the hospital. He cared for her until I was released six months later, but upon my release, due to our separation and yet another traumatizing experience, instead of going home to care for my baby, I returned to drug use.

– Carole Eady-Porcher, Co-Chair Women on the Rise Telling HerStory (WORTH), 2/26/17

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