According to a federal lawsuit, Ashley Caswell and at least three other pregnant detainees did not receive necessary medical care in Etowah County, Ala.
The Etowah County Detention Center is pictured on Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011, in downtown Gadsden, Ala. Ashley Caswell screamed in pain from inside an Alabama jail, pleading to be taken to a hospital, according to a newly filed lawsuit. The pregnant detainee’s water had broken and she was bleeding, but Caswell was allegedly told to “deal with the pain.”After being in labor for 12 hours, Caswell gave birth to her son in a jail shower on Oct. 16, 2021, her attorneys say.
“The mistreatment Ashley experienced in the Etowah County Jail is shocking and unacceptable,” Sharon Cohen Levin, a partner with Sullivan & Cromwell, said in a. “Incarcerated women who are pregnant and postpartum should not have to beg for — and still be denied — basic medical care, but that is the unfortunate reality at the jail.
charges for alleged drug use during pregnancy, according to the lawsuit. Alabama passed the statute in 2006 to target people who put children at risk by converting their homes into methamphetamine labs, The Post“Ashley is the latest victim of the Etowah County Jail, which consistently punishes pregnant women in the name of protecting ‘unborn children’ while simultaneously endangering their lives,” Emma Roth, Pregnancy Justice senior staff attorney, said in a news release.
Caswell’s woes began well before she went into labor, the lawsuit alleges. In March 2021, she was arrested two months into a high-risk pregnancy, given “her diagnosed hypertension, advanced maternal age, and history of abnormal Pap smears,” the suit states. Over the next seven months, she was allegedly denied access to weekly prenatal appointments and prevented from taking her prescribed psychiatric medication.
Caswell was taken to the hospital that evening. But when she returned to the jail two days later, Caswell continued to face mistreatment and neglect, the suit alleges.Caswell was allegedly denied the ibuprofen and breast pump her physicians had prescribed — leading to discomfort, pain, clogged milk ducts, inflammation in her breasts and a fever.
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