Birth Behind Bars

The Carceral Control of Pregnant Women in Prison

Rebecca M. Rodriguez Carey

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN:
  9781479815814
• eBook ISBN:
  9781479815838
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender & The Law
• Index: Social Sciences

Pregnant women's experiences in prison

Four percent of incarcerated women—more than three thousand—are pregnant in US prisons each year, yet little information is known about their pregnancy, birth, postpartum, and motherhood experiences. In Birth Behind Bars, Rebecca M. Rodriguez Carey draws on in-depth interviews with women who were once pregnant in prisons in the heart of the Midwest to provide a rare, intimate portrait into the intersection of motherhood and incarceration.

Using a reproductive-justice framework and narrative accounts, Rodriguez Carey shows how the prison system works alongside other carceral systems, such as the medical system and the child welfare system, to regulate and control women. She reveals how their incarceration goes beyond the function of criminal punishment, threatening both maternal and fetal health and the well-being of families. Birth Behind Bars offers an evocative account of how these powerful carceral systems collectively disrupt entire families and communities during pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period, including long after women are released from prison.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: A Pregnancy like No Other
• 1. Welcome to Prison: Two Pink Lines and the Disruption of Plans
• 2. The Unruly Maternal Body: Struggles to Be Heard
• 3. Pregnancy 101: The (Un)Making of Mothers
• 4. The Ultimate Cage: Birth as a Site of Surveillance and Control
• 5. Silenced Cries: Punishment in the Postpartum Period
• 6. Coming Home: Mothering on the Margins
• Conclusion: Beyond the Prison Gates
• Afterword
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author