Two weeks ago today, my oldest daughter gave birth to her first child. It was a moment of great triumph for her and for our family because she had to overcome incredible odds to be able to carry the child to full term. It makes me nauseated to think that such a joyous event might have been different if the color of her skin had been brown and the only crime she had committed was to try to build a better life for her family.
The most recent atrocity committed by the self-proclaimed “America’s Toughest Sheriff” involves a woman who was detained while 9-months pregnant. Alma Minerva Chacon’s case has been receiving media attention due to the brutality with which she was treated. The very same night of her arrest, Chacon went into labor and found herself afraid and alone, being rushed to a local hospital with her hands and legs chained in shackles.
Once she reached the hospital, nurses repeatedly begged the Sheriff’s staff to allow them to unchain the mother, but they refused and Chacon was forced to give birth while still shackled to the bed. At one point, the nurse asked for them to release her so that she could be escorted to the bathroom for a urinalysis, but even that request was denied. But the worst came once Chacon gave birth to her baby girl.
Still chained to the bed, Arpaio’s police staff refused to allow Chacon to hold her newborn baby and then warned her that if no one came to pick up the child within 72 hours, she would be turned over into state custody.
Viverlatino
http://vivirlatino.com/...
“When I was in bed, I was begging the sheriff, ‘Please let me free — at least one hand,’ and he said, no, he didn’t want to,” Juana Villegas said in an interview with a local Nashville television station. She was describing the experience of being shackled to her hospital bed as she went into labor. Villegas gave birth in the sheriff’s custody, after she was stopped by local police while driving without a valid license.[...]
Like Villegas, Alma Chacon, and Miriam Mendiola-Martinez gave birth in the United States shackled to their hospital beds, without their husbands, and in the presence of a prison guard. They also were not violent criminals, but rather, they were all undocumented and charged with an immigration-related offense in Sheriff Arpaio’s jurisdiction of Maricopa County, Arizona.
The three women report shockingly inhumane treatment by police officers. One woman’s newborn son was taken from her within 48 hours of his birth and given to a family member. Local authorities refused to let Juana Villegas use a breast pump the hospital gave her, causing her to be in “great pain.” Alma Chacon says she was not allowed to nurse or hold her baby until she was released from immigration custody almost 70 days after she gave birth.
Think Progress
It is almost unbelievable that only 14 states in America have laws making it illegal to chain a woman to a bed during childbirth.
It is against ICE policy, but still it is legal to inflict this type of humanity on a woman in 36 of our states.
Republicans cheering death; a brave soldier having to endure being booed and humiliated on national television because of his sexual orientation; Troy Davis; unwarranted police killings; war criminals free to safely walk our streets, Sheriff Joe Arpaio...
I don't recognize America anymore.