Reproductive rights of incarcerated women: Disrupting the system in the women's jail

The history of the reproductive rights of incarcerated women and the current trends of mass incarceration demonstrate the prevalence of the hegemonic system that still expects women to embrace a maternal and feminine role. Historically, the United States has incarcerated women because they break away from these prescribed gender roles and are then subjected to policies and restrictions that take away their reproductive rights. The vast majority of incarcerated women come from the most socially and disadvantaged groups of society. Their bodies are essentially an easy target for society to marginalize, discriminate, and control through ideological notions of race, class, and sex. I argue that incarcerated women have the fewest rights because they have the least control over their bodies and reproductive rights in regards to family planning and access to birth control. This failure of the criminal justice system to provide these services means that the system is also impinging on these women's economic, social, and political rights. Therefore, I further argue that the state needs to provide birth control access and education in the jails to prevent unwanted pregnancies. In addition to this, the jails need to also provide family planning services for women to become physically-, emotionally-, and financially-stable to prepare for motherhood. This is essential to disrupt the harmful societal patterns of recidivism that incarcerated women face. These women recognize that they cannot take control of their lives until they first take control of their fertility. And based on the research data collected from the Salt Lake County women's jail, it is determined that providing reproductive rights in the jails can disrupt these patterns of recidivism because it is typically the first institution a woman goes to when incarcerated, and jail sentences are less than a year. Thus, the jails can serve as a gateway in providing these women their reproductive rights, which society has historically and systemically impinged on.