“Class C” felony endangerment

October 15, 2023 9:02 AM

An Alabama woman was imprisoned for ‘endangering’ her fetus. She gave birth in a jail shower. (SLGuardian) During nearly 12 hours of labor, staff gave her only Tylenol for her pain, the suit says, allegedly telling her to “stop screaming”, to “deal with the pain” and that she was “not in full labor”. Caswell lost amniotic fluid and blood and was alone and standing up in a jail shower when she ultimately delivered her child, according to the complaint and her medical records. She nearly bled to death, her lawyers say.
posted by splitpeasoup (25 comments total)

Fears rise as 3 maternity units prepare to close in Alabama

If you have a snarky comment about Southern voters at your fingertips, maybe redirect your typing to check out the Yellowhammer Fund.
posted by the primroses were over at 9:40 AM on October 15, 2023 [42 favorites]

The court filing, on Oct. 13, 2023, mentions other victims.

AL.com: Caswell sued Etowah County Sheriff Jonathan Horton, Chief Keith Peek, chief of administration, Doctor’s Care Physicians, CED Mental Health Services and several members of the medical and correction staff at the jail. It was filed by attorneys from Pregnancy Justice, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. This first-of-its-kind federal civil rights lawsuit against the Etowah County Detention Center seeks unspecified damages.

Prior to delivery, Caswell slept on the floor of the jail on a thin mattress and could not get the regular medication she took to treat PTSD and depression, which was withheld by the staff, according to the lawsuit. She also suffered from high blood pressure and other risk factors that complicated the pregnancy. The complaint said she did not receive adequate care during the seven months of her pregnancy she spent behind bars. [...] The lawsuit claims the jail’s medical contract discouraged the staff from providing medications or seeking emergency care because it could reduce profit.

AL.com's previous coverage.
posted by Iris Gambol at 9:54 AM on October 15, 2023 [13 favorites]

That is really dark.

We have been quizzing my daughter for her AP Human Geography class this weekend, and statistics about maternal health come up a lot when comparing countries. America isn't seeming very steady in that regard. It makes me sad.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:10 AM on October 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

So, she was arrested for being an amateur fetus-endangerer, then turned over to professional fetus- and mother-endangerers? I mean it tracks, but there isn’t even a smokescreen for the cruelty?

Slightly less flippantly, the prison should be liable for complete and up-to-date pregnant support for every prisoner. If the cost breaks them, well, maybe don’t be a for-profit prison.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:34 AM on October 15, 2023 [70 favorites]

This was her fourth charge of Chemical Endangerment with 2 other pregnancies. Why wasn’t she offered help earlier instead of arrests?
posted by Ideefixe at 10:37 AM on October 15, 2023 [14 favorites]

This is the most harrowing thing I've read in age's. Jesus. It's terrifying
posted by Keith Talent at 10:41 AM on October 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

That is horrifying on so many levels I lost count. It mentions that she has lawyers, but what recourse does she have? Are there also pro-bono (or paid Pro Choice America or similar) lawyers acting on behalf of the baby? Presumably if all of this was done in his name, he also can now make a case that his host-mother (fuck them all to hell) wasn't treated in a way that was most conducive to his well being, and that separating them now is causing him trauma? Why do I feel like the baby being a boy makes it a stronger case?

I hate all of this.
posted by Mchelly at 11:16 AM on October 15, 2023 [14 favorites]

That is horrific. The cruelty of the staff is unthinkable.

I found the description of the issues understated. Placental abruption is a life-threatening emergency. It's one of the things that kills mothers and babies while we pretend that childbirth is all okay in the modern age. She is extremely lucky it was presumably a partial one and to be alive.

And while I hope very much that her son is okay, that can be a situation where brain damage occurs, especially without intervention, which, if they were snapping shots while the mum was passed out, they clearly were not doing. It means the baby was not getting enough oxygen-rich blood during the labour.
posted by warriorqueen at 11:56 AM on October 15, 2023 [9 favorites]

This was her fourth charge of Chemical Endangerment with 2 other pregnancies. Why wasn’t she offered help earlier instead of arrests?

I have a hunch race has something to do with it.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:24 PM on October 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

I already knew that the denial of choice and bodily autonomy is really about hating and subjugating women. I hope the baby is okay, because ir doesn't deserve more suffering, but this is so fucking horrible and predictable. This country is broken and it's getting worse.
posted by theora55 at 12:51 PM on October 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

EmpressCallipygos , did you happen to look at the photo in the article?
posted by sardonyx at 1:08 PM on October 15, 2023 [9 favorites]

I have a hunch race has something to do with it.

Ashley Caswell is white, so without race as a convenient target, they were performatively punishing her for being a woman.
posted by JohnFromGR at 1:08 PM on October 15, 2023 [7 favorites]

If the cost breaks them, well, maybe don’t be a for-profit prison.

Unfortunately, state-run prisons are not better.
posted by gauche at 1:45 PM on October 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

AL.com's "chemical endangerment law & pregnancy" coverage.
From 2015: Katie Darovitz shared her story with ProPublica and Al.com earlier this year. The 25-year-old suffers from epilepsy so severe that she can't drive safely or hold a job. When she found out she was pregnant, she went off her anti-epilepsy drugs - which have been linked to birth defects - and began using marijuana to prevent seizures. She was arrested a couple weeks after the December 2014 birth of her son because they both tested positive for marijuana.
2016 ProPublica follow-up: "It took 16 months and thousands of dollars, but prosecutors have dismissed the case against Katie Darovitz, one of hundreds of women charged under Alabama’s harsh chemical endangerment law."

BTW, this place also served as an ICE detention center for years - Anthology of Abuse: 24 Years at the Etowah County Detention Center.
posted by Iris Gambol at 1:48 PM on October 15, 2023 [17 favorites]

One of the zealots responsible for torturing these people is Detective Brandi Fuller, involved in almost all of Etowah’s chemical endangerment arrests and "listed as a witness or arresting officer in 222 out of 257 arrests of pregnant women since 2013".

Reuters, Dec. 6, 2022: Stacey Freeman, who is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, was under investigation by a family services agency for substance abuse when her daughter incorrectly told social workers that Freeman was pregnant, according to her Nov. 7 [2022] complaint. Freeman said she offered to take a pregnancy test, but it wasn’t administered. Sheriff’s investigator Brandi Fuller later issued a “patently false” warrant saying Freeman tested positive for amphetamines, according to the complaint. She was arrested for “chemical endangerment” days later, the complaint said, by sheriff’s deputies who stopped to assist her with a flat tire.

The agency's petition was filed on Jan. 21, 2022, and Freeman's children were removed from the home four days later. Freeman spent 36 hours in jail before being administered a pregnancy test. The charges against Freeman were dropped on Feb. 22, 2022. The complaint Freeman filed against Det. Fuller and Sheriff Jonathan Horton for defamation, false imprisonment and negligence.
posted by Iris Gambol at 2:22 PM on October 15, 2023 [20 favorites]

AL Code § 26-15-3.2: Chemical endangerment of exposing a child to an environment in which controlled substances are produced or distributed.

Alabama leads the nation in arrests of pregnant drug users; "Etowah and a handful of other counties apply the law to alleged hazards in the womb from drug use. No county does more to locate, jail and keep new mothers behind bars... [U]nlike other counties, Etowah mainly prosecutes mothers. Police in Alabama can arrest men and women for having drugs in the home or car near a child. According to court records, on average, 68% of chemical endangerment arrests in each large county were of women. But that’s not the case in Etowah, where 93% of chemical endangerment arrests from 2015 to 2023 involved women. AL.com also found Etowah County, unlike other Alabama counties, singled out pregnant women for special bond conditions, holding them in jail for months on low-level drug charges that would ordinarily lead to a small bond and release. Pregnant women instead had to secure and pay for a spot in rehab in order to leave jail.

"The sentence for chemical endangerment in cases of miscarriage or stillbirth can be as long as 99 years. Women in Alabama have been found guilty even in cases with no clear causal link between drug use and the death of a fetus." -- Via How One Alabama County Declared War on Pregnant Women Who Use Drugs - Some women were prosecuted for smoking marijuana before they even knew they were expecting at The Marshall Project (July 26, 2023), which details a few prisoners' experiences.
posted by Iris Gambol at 2:23 PM on October 15, 2023 [14 favorites]

I can’t read that article I know that just based on the synopsis.

But I do thank you, the primroses were over, for the link to donations to the Yellowhammer Fund.
posted by alwayson_slightlyoff at 2:51 PM on October 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

Unfortunately, state-run prisons are not better.

It might be easier to change that, because capitalism.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:59 PM on October 15, 2023

This is all just absolutely horrifying. What a world we've created :-(
posted by dg at 7:06 PM on October 15, 2023

This was the goal.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:16 PM on October 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

I hope some lawyer can represent the baby and sue that private prison company and the state for every penny.
posted by interogative mood at 8:41 PM on October 15, 2023

Christians without compassion, moralists with no moral compass. These people are evil.
posted by mumimor at 11:47 PM on October 15, 2023 [6 favorites]

This was a horror decades in the making. But now that it's here the question is: how do we stop it?

Because it's going to take reinstating Roe or passing a Federal abortion rights law. Some states are simply too deeply in the control of the forces of evil to have any reasonable expectation of being liberated through purely interanal means.

Much like the Civil Rights movement, while protest and other action at a local level is critical, it will never be sufficient.

There is a temptation to ask if the prison staff or prosecutors will face any charges for endangering the fetus, but we all know the answer to that is not merely no, but ha ha no. The cruelty is the point and they will never be penalized for being the agents of that cruelty. The law was not intended to be equally applied and it will not be.

Which means we either have to convince the Democrats to expand the Supreme Court, or convince the Democrats to pass a Federal abortion rights bill next time they have the trifecta with the full knowledge that will only happen by circumventing or ending the filibuster.

Those seem like Herculean tasks, but our predecessors won in the 1960's against worse odds.
posted by sotonohito at 9:26 AM on October 16, 2023 [9 favorites]

Driving 100 miles in labor; giving birth in the ER: Fears rise as 3 maternity units prepare to close in Alabama (NBC, Oct. 15, 2023) The state has one of the country’s highest maternal mortality rates. Now, three hospitals plan to stop delivering babies, putting some pregnant women at even higher risk.

Oasis Family Birthing Center et. al. v. Alabama Department of Public Health, Aug. 8, 2023: "A group of midwives and doctors filed a lawsuit in state court today challenging ongoing actions by the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH), which have imposed a de facto ban on freestanding birth centers throughout Alabama, preventing three such birth centers from providing much-needed pregnancy care to their patients. One center was forced to abruptly shut down operations earlier this year, despite a perfect safety record." ADPH "has created significant uncertainty around the legal status of birth centers that provide midwife-led care by asserting that all such birth centers require a 'hospital' license [...] ADPH has made it impossible for any such birth center to even attempt to obtain such a license, creating a dilemma that is both unlawful and unjustified." (ACLU Alabama)

Travelling farther for maternity services means higher rates of infant mortality and admission to neonatal intensive care units, and the closure of Labor and Delivery units have other effects across entire communities. The Alabama abortion ban went into effect with Dobbs, June 24, 2022. A little over a year later, it's hospital maternity units and birthing center closures in this high maternal-mortality state that is #3 in the country for infant mortality.
posted by Iris Gambol at 12:26 PM on October 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

That is horrific. The cruelty of the staff is unthinkable.

As one data point - I met a prison hospital doctor and nurse at an acquaintance's BBQ. I think I've got a pretty dark sense of humour but childish glee in their voices as they one-upped each other, telling tales about prisoners purposefully infecting their urinary tracks or other weird sorts of self harm made me more terrified than ever about the possibility of going to jail.
posted by brachiopod at 12:28 PM on October 16, 2023 [2 favorites]