A pregnant Tennessee woman was forced to give birth alone in her jail cell after she sought medical help more than an hour before delivering her baby, authorities said this week.
An inmate housed in a medical pod at the Montgomery County Jail in Clarksville, Tenn., had notified a deputy of “a medical concern” at 11:31 a.m. on Sunday, according to the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office. A deputy contacted the medical staff and a practical nurse arrived within minutes to conduct an assessment. When the nurse left the cell to consult with medical staff, a registered nurse arrived at 11:54 a.m. for a follow-up assessment, the sheriff’s office said in a Tuesday news release posted to Facebook.
“After the follow-up assessment, the medical staff left the cell but continued to assess the situation and order additional medical tests,” the sheriff’s office said, adding that deputies continued to check on the inmate.
But when a deputy returned to the woman’s cell at 12:41 p.m., the official found two people in the cell: the inmate and her newborn.
“A Deputy responded to the inmate’s cell and discovered that the inmate had given birth while in her cell,” the sheriff’s office said. The deputy and medical staff treated the woman at the jail before EMS transported her and the baby to the hospital, officials said.
The woman and her baby were in stable condition and under hospital care as of Tuesday night. The female inmate has not been publicly identified.
It’s unclear why the woman was not taken to a hospital before she gave birth alone in her jail cell, even as nurses and staff were checking on her. Inmates who give birth while detained are usually brought to a hospital when they are in labor, according to the nongovernmental organization Penal Reform International.
The sheriff’s office said an internal review of what happened was conducted by officials and medical staff, but it’s not known whether anyone would face discipline.
Montgomery County Sheriff’s Sgt. Bishop Delaney declined to give an update on the situation Thursday morning.
“In order to preserve confidentiality and for the protection and welfare of the mother and child in this incident, we will not be releasing any additional information,” Delaney told The Washington Post.
The Tennessee birth in jail is among a series of events in recent years where women were forced to deliver their babies from a cell instead of a hospital.
Kelsey Love gave birth to her son in Kentucky’s Franklin County Regional Jail in 2017, despite allegedly pleading with officials to help her. A federal judge later ordered the jail to pay Love $200,000 for the incident, but neither the jail nor its employees were required to take responsibility for what happened.
In 2018, Diana Sanchez said that she screamed in pain and her cries for help were ignored as she gave birth to her son, Jordan, at the Denver County Jail. After filing a federal lawsuit, she and her son received nearly $500,000 as part of two settlements, according to KDVR, a Fox affiliate in Denver.
Jazmin Valentine alleged that officials with the Washington County jail in Maryland ignored her for six hours before she gave birth to her daughter in 2021. She filed a lawsuit last year against the sheriff’s office, the company that provides health care at the jail and the officials and nurses she alleges ignored her cries for help, according to NBC4 Washington.
Issues surrounding medical care among pregnant inmates remain murky for state prisons and jails. While the First Step Act of 2018 requires the Bureau of Justice Statistics to collect data on pregnancy outcomes in federal prisons, it does not require the same for state prisons and jails, such as Montgomery County Jail, where Sunday’s birth took place.
Carolyn Sufrin, an associate professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine who has done extensive research on pregnancy in prison populations, told The Post in 2021 that there is a “tremendous variability” in the pregnancy care received by inmates in jails and prisons across the country.
“There are no mandatory standards that jails and prisons must follow when it comes to any health-care event, including pregnancy care,” Sufrin said.
The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office says on its website that it operates one of the largest detention programs in Tennessee. The jail has an average daily population of nearly 500, according to the sheriff’s office.
The woman giving birth alone on Sunday comes months after the widow of a Montgomery County Jail inmate who was found hanging in his cell filed a $2 million lawsuit negligence against the jail and sheriff’s department.
The lawsuit was filed in May in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee by Courtney Smith, whose husband, Bradley Edward Smith, killed himself last year, Main Street Clarksville reported. The lawsuit, which also names Montgomery County and two sheriff’s deputies as defendants, alleges deliberate indifference was shown related to Smith’s medical and mental health needs. The plaintiff says the alleged actions that led to the man’s death were a violation of the Eighth Amendment.
Anne Branigin contributed to this report.
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