Study: About 4 per cent of women are pregnant when jailed
Posted Mar 21, 2019 04:06:00 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
WASHINGTON — A new study has found that about 4 per cent of women incarcerated in state prisons were pregnant when they were jailed.
The number of women behind bars has risen dramatically over the past decades. But there had been a lack of data on women’s health behind bars and no tracking system for how frequently incarcerated women were pregnant.
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine researcher Dr. Carolyn Sufrin collected data from 22 state prison systems and the federal prison system over a yearlong period. Her research found there were 1,396 pregnant women incarcerated, with the majority in state prisons. The researchers reported 753 live births, 46 miscarriages, 11 abortions and three newborn deaths. No women died during childbirth.
Sufrin is publishing the results in the American Journal of Public Health.
Colleen Long, The Associated Press
