Indigenous woman shackled to hospital bed while in labour in Queensland

An Aboriginal woman who gave birth via caesarean section to a premature baby has been ‘shackled on and off since she came into the hospital’, says Debbie Kilroy of Sisters Inside. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

An incarcerated Indigenous woman was shackled to a hospital bed in Queensland while she was in labour last weekend, an advocacy group has said.

The birth happened just days before Labor and the Coalition blocked a bill to ban the “barbaric practice” of shackling incarcerated women during childbirth.