Tiana Hill said she kept telling staff at the Clayton County Jail that she was pregnant when she was an inmate there in 2019. She could feel her baby moving inside her, and had missed her period. But she said the staff insisted she wasn’t pregnant and made fun of her.
Ultimately, Hill gave birth in the jail’s infirmary, into her underwear, with male inmates walking by, she testified Wednesday before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law. After she gave birth, in late December 2019, she said she was placed in solitary confinement on suicide watch.
“They basically put me on lockdown for having a baby in their jail,” she said in tearful testimony at the Fulton County Government Center in downtown Atlanta. “It’s like I was being punished for something I had no control over.”
Hill was one of three women who testified before Sen. Jon Ossoff at Wednesday’s hearing, which was part of his investigation into the abuse of pregnant and postpartum women in state prisons and county jails. The inquiry falls under the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law.
Ossoff, who chairs the subcommittee, launched the investigation in February. Wednesday’s hearing was the second on the topic.
Ossoff said Wednesday that the subcommittee has reviewed lawsuits and public reports, conducted site visits and interviewed more than 100 currently or formerly incarcerated women, defense attorneys, medical experts and others. The subcommittee, he said, has identified more than 200 reported human rights abuses against pregnant or postpartum women nationwide.
The abuse includes women who had to give birth in prison showers, hallways, on filthy cell floors or in toilets, Ossoff said, adding that some women were told they were not in labor.
In several cases, the children died or were taken from their mothers, some of whom were put in solitary confinement within days of giving birth and without adequate medical care, Ossoff said. Women were shackled around their stomachs, wrists and feet during pregnancy and birth.
Ossoff added that 41 states have laws that prohibit or restrict shackling pregnant women, but that the subcommittee has identified apparent violations in at least 16 of those states, including Georgia.
“We heard powerful testimony today,” Ossoff told reporters after the hearing. “This is a human rights and health care crisis that’s unfolding as we speak that requires the urgent attention of local, state and federal leaders.”
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Hill testified that she was incarcerated in the Clayton jail for seven months starting in September 2019. She went into early labor that Dec. 29 and started urinating blood. Though she asked to be taken to medical care, she said she was told she wasn’t pregnant.
“I started crying,” she recalled Wednesday. “I knew I wasn’t crazy and that I was pregnant.”
She said jailers left her in a cell even as she was in unbearable pain. Her cellmate was panicking and banging on the door because she didn’t know how to deliver a baby, Hill said.
“I was screaming in pain trying to keep my baby in and that was when the jail officer heard and finally took me upstairs to the jail infirmary,” she said.
After she gave birth, Hill said jail staff wrapped her child in dirty sheets and left. Hill eventually was taken to a hospital, where she said she was allowed to see her son while handcuffed to a wheelchair.
Five days after the delivery, on Hill’s birthday, she was informed that her baby had died.
“This is something I can’t get over,” she said. “I don’t know where my son’s remains are or how he passed away.”
Hill is still litigating claims she filed in December 2021 against Clayton County and former Sheriff Victor Hill. She settled related claims against a doctor and medical company in December 2022.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Ossoff also heard testimony from Tabatha Trammell, who said she had been pregnant while incarcerated in Atlanta 40 years ago. She recalled being constantly hungry because she wasn’t given enough food.
Trammell estimated she was placed in solitary confinement 150 times, mostly when she was in postpartum recovery.
Forty years later, she said, incarcerated women are still having the same experiences. Trammell founded Woman with a Plan, a nonprofit that provides doula services to women incarcerated in the Gwinnett County Jail in Lawrenceville.
“Staff in prisons and jails need to see that these women are humans,” Trammell testified.
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Also testifying Wednesday was Dominique Grant with Women on the Rise Georgia, a nonprofit serving incarcerated women.
“Our organization, including its leadership, has observed firsthand the poor treatment of women during their pregnancy and afterward,” Grant testified. “Incarcerated pregnant women in Georgia’s prisons and jails are continuously ignored.”
Officials at the Clayton County Jail could not be reached for comment.
In a statement Thursday, a spokesperson for the Georgia Department of Corrections said the agency supports pregnant and postpartum inmates, including by offering prenatal classes and a doula program and by closely monitoring high-risk pregnancies, among other efforts. GDC also has a postpartum unit and requires Gender Responsive Training for staff who work at a female facility, the spokesperson said.
Reporter Rosie Manins contributed to this story.
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