ORLANDO, Fla. — Prison reform activists worry the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that established a federal right to abortion, could lead to more pregnant people behind bars — a scenario some lawmakers in Florida have been trying to curb for years.
Horrific accounts of women being raped and impregnated by guards and giving birth alone in their cells paint a scary picture of what life can be like for pregnant incarcerated people in Florida. With Roe protections gone, and recent efforts by Florida legislators to further restrict abortion, activists fear a post-Roe world would mean more women criminalized and placed in institutions with a bad reputation of caring for them.
“It’s a horrible experience,” Debra Bennett-Austin, a formerly incarcerated person, said. She served her final five years at Lowell Correctional Institution in Ocala, where all of the state’s nine imprisoned pregnant women are currently located.
