Jailed pregnant woman delivers her own baby. Shocking, except it keeps happening

Sonja Haller
Updated

A jailed pregnant woman told sheriff's officers she was having contractions.

Tammy Jackson was taken to an empty jail cell anyway and left alone. Almost seven hours later, they found the 34-year-old woman holding her newborn daughter, according to a two-page letter from a public defender.

"She was forced to deliver the baby alone," Public Defender Howard Finkelstein wrote to Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony.

Wow, that's so shocking! Except that it isn't. It's happened twice previously within the last two years to pregnant women in different jails in the United States. Both times, the women said their screams were ignored by jail staff.

In this case, Finkelstein wrote that the mom-to-be began complaining to jail staffers of contractions at 3:16 a.m. on April 10. By 10 a.m., she had delivered the baby by herself, all alone, the Miami Herald first reported.

'Outrageous and inhumane'

Finkelstein wrote that sheriff's officers spoke to an on-call doctor four hours after Jackson began complaining about contractions. The doctor said "he would check when he arrived" and he did – at 10 a.m., after Jackson had the baby.

During the seven hours in her cell, Jackson was bleeding and alone.

"Not only was Ms. Jackson's health callously ignored, the life of her child was also put at grave risk," Finkelstein wrote. "It is unconscionable that any woman, particularly a mentally ill woman, would be abandoned in her cell to deliver her own baby. What happened to Ms. Jackson is outrageous and inhumane."

Chief Assistant Public Defender Gordon Weekes, who also signed the letter to Tony, told the Miami Herald that Jackson remains in the sheriff's custody but was taken to the hospital to recover. He could not provide details on the baby’s condition.

Jackson was arrested in late March, according the Miami Herald, on failure to appear. She'd been arrested in January on cocaine possession charges and released, but failed to report for pretrial services, so a warrant had been issued for her arrest.

Finkelstein wrote that county staffers did not take the pregnant woman to the hospital, where she could give birth safely. "Yet in her time of extreme need and vulnerability, (Broward Sheriff’s Office) neglected to provide Ms. Jackson with the assistance and medical care all mothers need and deserve."

He is demanding an "immediate review of the medical and isolation practices in place in all detention facilities."

USA TODAY had the Broward County Sheriff's Office on-call public information officer paged for comment but has not heard back. The Miami Herald reported that the sheriff's office launched an internal affairs investigation into the incident.

'Let her scream for hours'

Last year, a woman gave birth alone in her Texas cell after she said guards ignored her cries.

"I had my baby in my hands,” Shaye Bear said.

Bear, an admitted meth addict, was 5 months pregnant at the time and gave birth to a 1-pound, 2-ounce baby, she said.

Another woman who said she gave birth while in solitary confinement last year sued Alameda County in California. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco in 2018, accuses the Alameda County Sheriff's Office of "barbaric conduct" by forcing Candace Steel to give birth alone to a baby girl in a dirty cell.

"Nobody paid any attention to her – they just let her scream for hours," Oakland attorney Yolanda Huang said.

How can this be prevented?

Seems like there should be a law against keeping pregnant women in solitary confinement to keep just this sort of thing from happening, doesn't it?

Maryland agreed.

The Maryland law goes into effect in October and requires correctional and detention facilities to have a written policy that forbids inmates during and after pregnancies from isolation housing, including for medical reasons. Exceptions are possible but requires regular monitoring of inmates and documentation.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Jailed pregnant woman delivers her own baby. Shocking, except it keeps happening