Cook County Prisoner Shackled During Childbirth

The Southtown Star reports:

Five women have filed suit against the Cook County sheriff's department after enduring what they call degrading and dehumanizing practices that involved keeping them handcuffed and shackled during childbirth.

"It's dehumanizing. It's degrading. It's demoralizing. It's outrageous," said Simone Jackson, a former Cook County Jail inmate and a plaintiff in a class action lawsuit filed in federal court Monday.

Jackson, 40, was jailed in November 2007 on a burglary charge. Three months pregnant and awaiting trial for an alleged nonviolent crime, Jackson was eligible for the sheriff's MOM's program, which sends 16 expecting or new inmate moms to Haymarket Center, an outside care and treatment facility.

On her due date in May, Jackson said she was transported to Stroger Hospital of Cook County free of constraints, but sheriff's officials placed the shackles - a chain connecting an inmate's hand to their ankle - on her left side and secured the device to her hospital bed immediately. An armed deputy stood guard while Jackson, still shackled and under nerve-numbing epidural anesthesiology, gave birth to her baby girl.

Great moments in socialized medicine.