Don't Leave Your Friends Behind: Concrete Ways to Support Families in Social Justice Movements and Communities by Victoria Law & China Martens

Author:Victoria Law & China Martens [Law, Victoria & Martens, China]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Anthologies, Feminism
ISBN: 9781604863963
Google: wG37BgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 13568677
Publisher: PM Press
Published: 2012-01-15T08:17:33+00:00

Mothers Among Us: The Prison Birth Project

Marianne Bullock

The Prison Birth Project is an organization focused on reproductive justice. We work to provide education, support, and advocacy to women and girls at the intersection of the criminal justice system and motherhood. Our goal is to provide the tools to help them make empowering choices and to provide continuous care throughout the spectrum of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. We offer this in the form of childbirth education classes, one on one meeting time, our Mothers Among Us program and open resource compilation with local organizations and knowledgeable references. We seek to provide a transformational space for women to support each other and work through issues of oppression that affect their families and the social landscape of mothering.

Many of us hold values in our hearts that support the abolition of the prison and criminal system and support movements of decarceration and alternatives to jail sentences. This system wasn’t built for women and current policies in no way support family creation. Lots of people ask me how I can hold those views and still work within an institution that does not support mothers/families. The answer for me is simple: you don’t leave your friends behind.

Over the past two years, we have identified five areas within prison policy that most affect incarcerated women. You can support them through their own prisoner-led movements and by supporting outside movements to change these policies:

Lack of access to healthy, nutritious food

Lack of visitation with children and family/lack of transportation for children to facility

Use of restraints while pregnant during delivery and postpartum

Use of medical isolation while postpartum

Lack of sound breastfeeding policy and support for new mothers who wish to breastfeed their babies

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