Reproductive Justice For US Prisons
Since 1980, the number of women in prison has tripled, leading to a high incidence of serious health concerns, including HIV, Hepatitis C, and reproductive diseases. The rate of HIV is higher among women prisoners than men prisoners and can be as much as one hundred times higher among prisoners than in the general population, depending on the prison group. The trend towards longer and heavier sentences have also lead to greater health concerns as many prisons offer little accessibility to adequate medical care. Also, prisons are increasingly being built on rural land, isolated from major resources for medical care. Two major areas of concern for reproductive justice in prisons lies in medical neglect in the form of little to no reproductive health care and nonconsensual prison intervention on a woman’s right to reproduce.
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Famous quotes containing the words reproductive, justice and/or prisons:
“The blind conviction that we have to do something about other people’s reproductive behaviour, and that we may have to do it whether they like it or not, derives from the assumption that the world belongs to us, who have so expertly depleted its resources, rather than to them, who have not.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“As thou urgest justice, be assured
Thou shalt have justice more than thou desirest.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Yes, it is the hour at which, long ago, I felt happy. What always awaited me then was a light and dreamless sleep. But something had changed because, with the wait for tomorrow, it is my cell that I have found. As if the familiar paths traced in the summer skies could lead to prisons as well as innocent slumbers.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)