Women in New York State Prisons Don’t Have Enough Sanitary Pads

Women in New York State Prisons Don’t Have Enough Sanitary Pads, Not to Mention Other Daily Indignities
Dani McClain on February 13, 2015 - 4:33 PM ET

http://www.thenation.com/blog/198153/women-new-york-state-prisons-dont-have-enough-tampons-not-mention-other-daily-indignitie

Pregnant women and those who have just had babies in New York state prisons are shackled—despite a 2009 state law that prohibits the use of restraints during labor, delivery and recovery. Women who are not pregnant use newspaper and magazines while on their periods because they are not provided an adequate number of pads. Others face weeks- or months-long delays to see medical providers, and so sexually transmitted infections worsen or cancerous cells spread past the point of being treatable. Others are rushed through appointments and deemed “problem patients” if they ask too many questions, or else forced to discuss the intimate details of a health issue through the door of a solitary confinement cell. Incarceration violates women’s reproductive rights—to say nothing of their dignity and humanity—at every turn. These are among the findings of a report on the state of reproductive health care for women in New York state prisons released this week.

The Correctional Association of New York, an organization that’s monitored conditions in the state’s prisons since 1846 and which produced the report “Reproductive Injustice,” calls it the most extensive study of reproductive health care in a state prison system to date. It’s the product of five years’ worth of investigation into New York’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS), which provides reproductive healthcare to 4,000 women per year, according to the report. Women make up just 4 percent of DOCCS’s prison population, but because of the upward national trend in incarcerating women—the women’s prison population increased in the US by nearly 900 percent between 1977 and 2013—the study offers a look at the inhumane conditions faced by a growing number of women, the majority of whom are poor and of color.