Season 2, Episode 10: Perinatal Health in Incarceration

Have you ever wondered what it is like for women to go through a pregnancy while incarcerated? Kristie Williams shares her personal experience of pregnancy and the birth of her twins while in prison. She calls providers into action while they are caring for incarcerated pregnant women, and to remind them of their humanity and provide the utmost empathy. Megan and Kristie also discuss the new legislation in place to aid incarcerated women during their pregnancy. Join us as we strive to raise awareness, advocate for change, and empower women. 

Incarcerated Women’s Health Website:  https://incarceratedwomenshealth.org

Providing Care to Incarcerated Pregnant Patients: A Training for North Carolina Healthcare Professionals: https://incarceratedwomenshealth.org/resources-for-healthcare-professionals/

Corrections Staff Training:  https://incarceratedwomenshealth.org/resources-for-corrections-legal-professionals/

Dignity for Women Who are Incarcerated Act https://www.ncleg.gov/Sessions/2021/Bills/House/PDF/H608v5.pdf

Advocacy and Research on Reproductive Wellness of Incarcerated People: 

https://arrwip.org/ 

National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls:

https://www.nationalcouncil.us

Alcohol and Drug Council of NC perinatal section: https://www.alcoholdrughelp.org/perinatal

Women’s Recovery Conference:   https://pub.mahec.net/wrc/index.php

Just Us Podcast Social Media:

Facebook: Just Us: Before, Birth and Beyond Podcast 

Instagram: @justus.podcast.wnc

Please provide feedback here:
https://redcap.mahec.net/redcap/surveys/?s=XTM8T3RPNK 

Transcript

Intro [00:02]: Welcome back to just us before Birth and Beyond. We're so glad to have you here with us today. My name is Katlyn and I am one of the hosts of this podcast. I'm a nurse and have been a nurse for 10 years in Western North Carolina, and I'm here today to introduce our episode. So, today we're going to be hearing from Megan Williams and Christie Puckett about incarcerated pregnant people. This is such a good episode. I know I'm not supposed to have favorites, but I have. This is probably one of my favorite episodes from this season. So, Christie is going to share with us her lived experience being an incarcerated pregnant person, how she got her start advocating for other incarcerated pregnant people. Megan is interviewing her and asked such wonderful, really thought provoking and helpful questions. There's discussion of laws around pregnancy during in car situation specific to North Carolina, and some really great tips for healthcare providers and how we can best care compassionately for incarcerated pregnant people. So, buckle up and get excited. It's a fantastic episode and without further ado, let's get into it.

Megan Skull Williams [01:21]: Hey everyone, my name is Megan Skull Williams and I'm a research associate at the U N C Collaborative for Maternal and Infant Health. We work towards improving health outcomes for birthing people and their children with a special focus on those who are at highest risk. Today I am honored to talk with Christie Puckett Williams about some of the issues that come up when someone experiences incarceration while they're pregnant. Christie, would you please Introduce yourself?

Christie Puckett Williams [01:47]: Sure. I'm Christie Puckett Williams. I am a North Carolina native and I am an advocate, an activist, an organizer, and a lobbyist working to end the incarceration of women and girls.

Megan Skull Williams [01:59]: Awesome. Thanks so much for your time, and Williams, no relation that we know of, right?

Christie Puckett Williams [02:04]: No, not that we know of.

Megan Skull Williams [02:06]: There has been a dramatic increase in the rate of incarceration among women in the United States, starting in the 1980s as a result of increased criminalization due to the quote, war on drugs, and quote, and more punitive policies generally, the rate of incarceration of female identified people in North Carolina prisons has increased fivefold over the past 50 years, and their rate of incarceration in jails has increased 18 fold during that same time. Many of these people, roughly 80% are mothers to children under the age of 18, and somewhere between five and 7% are pregnant while they're incarcerated. The subpopulation of pregnant people in jails and prisons are at much higher risk for adverse birth outcomes for both mother and child. Typically, folks that are incarcerated have higher rates of chronic illness. They have higher rates of poverty, they have lower rates of healthcare access, and oftentimes the circumstances that brought them to jail or prison in the first place might also lead to complications with their pregnancy. So, CMIH has reigned a prenatal

 Incarceration work group for a handful of years to bring concerned individuals together around this topic, and we've had some recent developments that we'll share later in the podcast. Christie, can you tell me a little bit more about your role in advocating for incarcerated pregnant people?

Christie Puckett Williams [03:33]: Yes. I started out as a incarcerated pregnant person, someone who did not have the knowledge or even understand that I could advocate for myself. So, when I was incarcerated, I was pregnant. I received no prenatal care; I took a guilty plea to get out. I had a set of twins five days later, had no idea I was in a high risk pregnancy for the entire time. I'm glad, I guess now I didn't know. I've probably been more concerned than what I was. The twins were born six weeks early; I know that it's because of the stress of being incarcerated, the lack of nutrition, the lack of mobility. There's so many issues that pregnant people face while incarcerated, and so my advocacy was just born out of my own experience and I knew that if I had experience that there probably were lots of other people who had experienced it as well, and as I began to talk about heal out loud, and talk to other people about my experience, I began to come in contact with lots of people who had experienced my exact same situation. Much worse, nobody much better. Some people marginally better, but no one who I've talked to of the many women that I've talked to over the years of advocacy who have been pregnant and or have given birth while incarcerated, no one has described to me a good, a healthy pregnancy or birthing situation.

Megan Skull Williams [04:58]: And I think that speaks to one of our underlying points of just clarity, that we always try to make sure that we emphasize when we talk about this topic, and that is that prison and jail is not a healthy place for any pregnant person at all. Am I right?

Christie Puckett Williams [05:14]: And I would clarify, it's is not a healthy place for any person, any human being. Yeah. Jails and prisons are not a healthy place for, but it especially unhealthy for those of us who suffer from a variety of ailments, diseases, conditions, and have varying symptoms, and so for someone who is pregnant especially it is not a good place, but it's also not a good place for someone who has H I V or AIDS or any other chronic illness or even an acute illness. Something as small as a headache can be exacerbated tenfold in a carceral setting because of the cost that to see the doctor and the cost of the medication, and you may not have that money. So, in the injustice that exists within the criminal legal system within prisons and jails around healthcare, it's really staggering. It's really sad. It's depressing, and yes, no one should be pregnant or laboring while in jail or prison.

Megan Skull Williams [06:11]: All of this advocacy work and just all of the education, and training and things that we're trying to bring to prisons and jails really is just to make things better for the people that are already trapped in the system. It's in no way us advocating that we're trying to make this a place that's sufficient or even marginally Okay for folks to spend this time in their lives and for any people, as you said, Christie. So, I think it's just important for us to keep that in mind because what we don't want is for there to be this belief that, oh, they can get prenatal care in jail and or in prison, and so that's they'll be okay if they're there, which is absolutely not the case. So, can you tell me a little bit, I mentioned it, but can you tell me a little bit about the new law that was passed in North Carolina related to incarceration and pregnancy?

Christie Puckett Williams [06:55]: Oh yes. Again, because, not just my experience, but the experience of so many women who we talked to while we were researching over the years about the different practices, I was very familiar with the practices inside of jail and jails here in North Carolina and prisons here in North Carolina. But there has been varying experiences across the country, and so we talked to people from across the country to ensure that what we wrote would be able to capture most of the scenarios that a pregnant or parenting person could face while incarcerated. We limited the use of restraints from the second trimester until six weeks postpartum. I think a really that's important. So, when we say limit the use of restraints, that sounds benign, but no shackling. So, folks will not be handcuffed, or their legs cuffed to the bed, not just during labor and delivery, but even before, while they're just in regular settings, they will not be shackled, and so that's a huge improvement of where we were.

We limited body cavity searches, meaning that they have to have a real reason to come in, and real suspicion and there has to be evidence. They cannot just come in and say squat and cough before they could do that, and it could be any staff person could demand that you squat and cough or that they could check your body cavities and that could be a male officer, anybody. We standardized the nutritional content; make sure that there was access to food and dietary supplements. If that wasn't the best provision, but we got, we wanted to make sure that language got in there, that nutrition was addressed and we knew that we couldn't regulate everything and we couldn't get the best of the best. But we knew that if we mentioned nutrition and gave the physician the power to supplement what the jail of the prison provides, then we would potentially be covering those, the women's and the baby's nutritional needs.

Another thing was providing access to menstrual products. So, free menstrual products and not, I think another part of that is not just free menstrual products, but we really were specific about if someone is indigent, that they still receive quality menstrual products. Because what we had seen was a person that wasn't able to afford menstrual products and that the jail or the prison would give to them, those products would be very cheap, substandard products that really did not hold up for women and girls, and so we were specific about that. We limited housing restrictions and bed assignments. So, the beds have to be a certain height, limited housing restrictions, meaning that we can't just routinely place women in solitary light conditions, which would cause safekeeping. It also addressed where a baby or a mother is placed so that a mother can be placed in a prison within reason that's closer to her child. So, that breastfeeding and bonding and all of those things can happen, and we also expanded the contact visitations. Right now, you mothers may depending on where they're located, sometimes you can have a visit, but it's through a glass and there's no contact allowed with them and their children, and so we were able to ensure that children, I believe it's up to two years old, are able to still get it's now it's just one.

Megan Skull Williams [10:01]: One year. Yeah, it's too bad.

Christie Puckett Williams [10:03]: Thought it was two. Anyway, so it's one year. Thank you Megan. Mad about that. Okay. Anyway, it's one year that children, that moms can have a contact visit with their baby, and so again, as you hear, this is not perfect, but it's what we have, and so we knew that we had to take incremental steps. I think other crucial part of this legislation is education provided to the staff and to pregnant and parenting people on the inside, and I would think the other big thing take away from this legislation is that it's not just in the prisons that all 100 counties and their jails have to comply with this, and to your point about the 18% increase in women being incarcerated in jails, we know that because of the varying budgets and sizes of communities, that the conditions inside of jails range immensely across the 100 counties, and so being able to set a floor for the standard of care for pregnant people, regardless of the resources of that community, I think was very important.

Megan Skull Williams [11:03]: So, you did a really nice job summarizing all that. That's a lot so, thank you for that. There's a couple other things that I wanted to point out. One is that people cannot be charged any co pays or any kind of cost at all for their prenatal care or for their delivery care or for their hospital stay or for any of that. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that postpartum care is included in that. That's another one of those things where, oh shoot, we wish that would've been included. But these things always get negotiated a little bit. But that from like a healthcare provider's perspective, it's helpful to know that your patients should not be charged at all for any of their visits and that shouldn't be a deterrent for them to receive any care. One other thing just a little more about the visitation.

It is under a year and for moms to be placed within 250 miles of the child's home of record in that if they are in a medium or low or minimum security prison, they can have those contact visits twice weekly, and so that's, again, it would be great if it was more, but that's at least a minimum standard, and then one other thing I don't know if you mentioned was that unclothed searches of female incarcerated individuals should not be performed by male corrections officers if there's a female corrections officer available within a reasonable amount of time, and so that's another one that sort of applies to all female identified individuals. So, yeah, those are the basic provisions of the law. We have some educational materials that we've developed through C M I H that I really want to make sure that we share with the healthcare community.

And one of those is actually a training for nurses that has nursing contact hours associated with it, and it's, you get one nursing contact hour for it and it goes over all of these provisions of the law as well as some additional information about just trauma-informed care and how you might work with someone if you happen to run across them in your care or in your practice, either in a hospital setting or if you're in a clinic setting, and so about that, Christie, just as someone that has the experience that you've had, can you maybe just say, speak to healthcare professionals about maybe what would you like them to know about providing medical care to incarcerated pregnant people?

Christie Puckett Williams [13:24]: Yeah, well, I didn't receive any care while I was incarcerated. So, the care that I did receive was after I had gotten out. But what I can tell you is that the judgment that I was met with in the delivery room by medical staff was palpable. They asked me when I came in, what was my name, I gave them my name and active labor and they said, we don't see who's your OBGYN, and I told them I didn't have one, and they were like, where were you being seen? I said, I hadn't been seen, and they had pulled up my name and they could see I had no appointments, and they were really nasty and were like, why hadn't you been seen? Why didn't you receive any care? And I said, well, I was locked up. That's no excuse. You still should have had appointments as if I can dictate and determine if I move in and out.

I've had court dates that the jail make you think they're going to really get out of transport van shackle me up and down and bring me over here to a medical appointment? They don't even take me to court half the time. I think just understanding that your patient, number one, that a person who is incarcerated didn't take me to, and I was right across the street. So, what when they cross into your exam room or delivery room on the table, whatever they are your patient, their legal status is no concern of yours. What they've done, how long they got locked up. All of that is not really your concern. Your concern is the immediate task at hand. How to care for the person who is in front of you and how to get them back to wellness, and you have to understand several things, depending if you're talking about someone who's been incarcerated in a jail. So, people in jail are more transient. They move in and out a little bit more. So, they may seek healthcare somewhere along the way. They may not even be here tomorrow. You might see them today, they bail out and they're gone tomorrow. But a prison is a more permanent situation, and so when you're talking to someone who is a prisoner, you have to understand several things that they don't have any bodily autonomy. They have no say so over their body.

I just don't, and when I say that to myself, I think right now, can they even consent to treatment legally if they don't have bodily autonomy? But that's a whole other situation I think we have to investigate down the road. So, because they don't have bodily autonomy and because they don't get to make decisions, you have to remember someone tells them when to get up, when to lay down, when to turn on lights, when to turn them off, when to go to the bathroom, when to take a shower, when to eat, when to sit down, when to read, when to use the phone. Because of that, they oftentimes have trouble making decisions. So, when you present them with, you can do this or this, they may not be able to make that decision simply because all decision making has been taken away from them for so long.

And helping your patient in your care in that exam room, realize their autonomy and realize that they still are a person and they deserve compassion and dignity and all the things. The love that is really probably 90% of your care, the prescription that you write. Okay, that's beautiful. But how you make a person feel is 90% of it, and I can tell you that incarcerated people feel unheard, unseen, unloved, unworthy, and it is not your job as a medical professional to judge any of that. Your job is to help them get to wellness, and a lot of wellness depends on, as we know, it's psychosomatic how you think and feel definitely determines can determine physicality, and so if you're dealing with someone with lots of issues, pregnant or not, they're going to have a lot of trauma around their healthcare and just being incarcerated. But when we're talking about pregnant people, I think it's very important that we remember that pregnancy is supposed to be one of the most beautiful times in the world where people are bringing a new life, brand new start.

And that can just be very jarring for someone, especially if they're going to deliver and they're not going to leave that hospital with their baby. So, if they're being sent back to prison and their baby is being discharged, whether it to be to family or to a foster family, that impending doom that trauma is not something that I even want to think about, and so I just don't want people medical professionals to feel sorry, but I do want them to tap into their empathy to imagine what it would feel like to be in that situation and what would you want someone to do for you and do those things.

Megan Skull Williams [17:47]: Thank you. That's so important, and so you made a distinction between prisons and jails, which is actually really helpful. So, the jails would be, or your county level facilities typically where folks spend not very much time, and in North Carolina, the only prison that accepts pregnant folks is the North Carolina Correctional Institute for women in Raleigh, and most of the folks that would be seen from the prison would probably be in that area of the state. But Christie, what you say about the trauma that they've already experienced and also anticipating the trauma of losing their child or children if they're like you and had more than one pregnancy at the same time, that is such a profound loss, and just thinking and having the utmost compassion for that person in that time of their life, I think is really crucial for just all of us that work with these populations to consider if it's a labor and delivery situation, lots of hospitals have volunteer doula programs because, and that would be a really good thing for folks that are pregnant and incarcerated to have access to because the vast majority of them always pretty much Christie, they're not, they don't know when they're going to be brought to the hospital, they're not allowed to have a family member present with them during the labor and delivery Is that your.

Christie Puckett Williams [19:05]: Well, that's my understanding, and so many are either induced or scheduled for C-sections, and so there's lots of conversation about why that is. You know what? And then if we induce, I let me tell you why I think the induction is important because why would you induce, you induce because you can control when this person goes into labor. Because what you know is if she goes into a spontaneous labor, the response of the system is so slow that it puts her and the baby at risk. So, please understand that women are being induced because the system recognizes the inefficiency of its healthcare inside. So, it goes ahead and makes you have a baby the day that they choose for you to have a baby.

Megan Skull Williams [19:46]: That speaks to your point about bodily autonomy too, doesn't it? If you're induced, then you're not even allowed to have the natural process of Labor.

Christie Puckett Williams [19:53]: They pick your baby's birthday for your child. Think about it like that. The system, the state is picking your baby's birthday. It's picking when your child is born, it is forced birth, and I think just real quick, Megan, I think we have to have a historical conversation about this, and so for all my medical professionals, I want you to go look up James Mary, the Dr. James was a OBGYN who bought enslaved people and who is the godfather of the obstetrics and gynecology like field, but used enslaved people, forced births, all types of things so that he could perfect his practice and could make millions when he dealt with his white patients, and so there's a long history of forced birth and the regulation of birth in this country that has always happened to black and brown bodies, and it's no coincidence that the war on drugs was to literally attack black and brown communities so that black and brown women would be in the custody of the states so that their birth and birthing could be regulated. So, it's not a conspiracy theory, it's not us abolitionists just out here making stuff up. There is a real historical context that we can refer back to see that history is not repeating itself. History is just echoing.

Megan Skull Williams [21:13]: Yeah. That's big. Yeah. So, Christie, let's see. Is there anything else you would like for providers to know about how they interact with folks who might be coming from a carceral setting?

Christie Puckett Williams [21:27]: I think they should treat them like patients like as they would any other patient. But that does not mean ignore the very real circumstances that they are coming from and going back into. So, that doesn't mean that we set the fact that they are a prisoner aside and totally disregarded. It means that we don't let this status of the prisoner diminish our care for them. But we do have to factor in, in our treatment plans that they are going back to prison. And so you have to curate your plan to factor into, okay, if I say they need to have X, Y, and Z at this certain time, understand they may or may not get that at that certain time. You can recommend it, you can prescribe it, but that doesn't mean it's going to happen, and so as much as you can do to empower a person to manage their healthcare as much as they can, as much as they can, and give them tips, things that are in their sphere of power, that is very helpful because people can walk, they can recreate, they can do some things at the prison.

The food is not the best food. There is very limited access to fresh fruits and vegetables, especially in jails, and so also understanding the difference between jails and prisons I think is important. That again, jails are much more, the door is revolving more and more so you're dealing with people who are in and out more likely to have lots of trauma and substance use, and so all the things that come with that, people in prison tend to have more chronic illnesses due to the lack of healthcare that they have received up until the point that they see you, and so as much as you can do to disrupt and be different they may not remember your name, but they will remember how you made them feel, and they will carry that with them as they move throughout their journey. And you don't want to be the person that send someone into a a spiral the way you treat them sends them into a talent span, and you know, the whole point of prison is supposed to be rehabilitative, and so we have to do everything we can to foster the restoration and the redemption of people who we come in contact with.

Megan Skull Williams [23:26]: One thing I did want to mention, because I think you said earlier, you mentioned safekeeping in North Carolina we have something called safekeeping, which is basically used for lots of different medical conditions, but it's often used in pregnancy and it's meant for, the reasoning that's given is that they're a person's medical needs cannot be adequately taken care of at a local jail, and so they're then sent to the prison facility, and this is often used as a reason to send pregnant women to the North Carolina Correctional Institute for women, the state prison even prior to being convicted of a crime.

Christie Puckett Williams [24:03]: Yes.

Megan Skull Williams [24:03]: Which, you know, I think many people really surprised that's the case, but the pregnancy itself can be a reason that a person is taken from her home all the way in western North Carolina and sent all the way to Raleigh. Even if she's not convicted, and so we end up with these systems that are pulling these folks in during their pregnancy and they're not even let out until oftentimes after the baby's born, and sometimes they have the baby in Raleigh and then they're sent back to their local jail for their recovery, which is really hard to imagine that that would be.

Christie Puckett Williams [24:36]: And have their medicated assistant treatment stopped after they deliver. So, literally medication that is keeping the mom alive and out of withdrawals, it stopped when she has the baby. So, it's to your point, I think I know where you're trying to go, which is there are so many levers of power that suck people in to the system and safekeeping that's a way of watering down what it really is. Safekeeping a solitary confinement, and solitary confinement is defined by the World Health Organization as torture. So, we just have to say what we're doing, we are placing pregnant people in torturous conditions because it's convenient, and that's what they say on the face. But on the flip side is they know that if a pregnant person is involved in an altercation, that the news story around that and the liability around that is going to be huge.

And so really it speaks to the dangerousness, the violent danger nature inside of a prison to where medically vulnerable people can't exist in general population because they are at risk of being harmed in that prison. That itself is an argument for why people should be free because I don't have control over my body and you can't guarantee my safety. A lot of layers, and you can't, and I think this is another thing. If I am involved in an altercation and I defend myself, I too am charged because I was involved in the altercation. So, in a prison or a carceral setting, if someone begins to fight you, you have to either let them fight you and you can still, even if you let them fight you, you can still be swept up in the investigation, and so I guess my point, Megan, in telling the medical providers all of this is just to give you a little bit of insight with what a person has to deal with every single day when they're incarcerated. So, when they see you, they got a lot going on. Their anger is not towards you. Even if they're being nasty towards you, you have to understand that they are in nastiness and vileness all day, and your job, my job, our job is to remind them of their humanity, to remind them of their humanity so that they can begin to act within that humanity, and that is how we get to freedom and liberation. Happening to our humanity and helping others around us happen to theirs.

Megan Skull Williams [26:54]: Yes. Speaking of freedom and liberation, what is your vision for the future, Christie? What do you see happening?

Christie Puckett Williams [27:01]: I see a future where we address the social and political and economic issues with social, economic and political solutions. Incarceration is none of the above. It is simply disappearing and disconnecting people, and it's like pushing pause. So, people go into jails in prison and it's like we push pauses in their life and they come out, we push play again. They start the tape exactly where they left off when they went in, and jails in prisons aren't getting us to a safe community. And I just always remind people that a mother in West Bank, west Philly, western North Carolina, all want the same things. We all want to raise our children in healthy, safe communities and we all deserve to do that, and we can do that by holding ourselves and each other accountable. But accountability does not have to mean punishment. It doesn't have to mean banishment.

It can look the way that we imagine it to look, and I'll give people an little example of what I mean when we think about, I call myself an abolitionist and people think that's just the tearing down of something. But that's really a reductionist view of abolitionist because abolitionist is not just about dismantling something, it's about revisioning and recreating and re-imagining something that replaces it that is less harmful and that works for us all. So, a good example of that is, if I steal $20 from you, Megan, and you call the police, and the police come and arrest me. Do you get your $20 back?

Megan Skull Williams [28:30]: Nope.

Christie Puckett Williams [28:31]: No. Go to jail. You spend your tax dollars to feed, cloth, hats me, you pay for my public defender when I go to court, all the things, and you still don't get your $20 back, and guess what? I go and bop your neighbor for $40 next week when I get out. But now what if rather than I get arrested, I get enter into, I'm held accountable, and it's a restorative conversation that happens. You asked me, well now Christie, why did you instant my $20? And I tell you I'm formerly incarcerated, haven't been able to find a job, and my kids were hungry and I just needed some money to feed my kids, and you say, oh, huh. So, how can we get Kristy what she needs? How can we get Kristy's kids fed on a regular basis so she doesn't have to steal the $20? And then you say to me, I want you to stop stealing. I'm going to help you figure this out, and you have to get my $20 back. Now, you've been made whole, you got your money back.

Christie Puckett Williams [29:27]: I have agreed to not do this to anybody else. So, we have justice moving forward, and the underlying issue, my children's hunger has been resolved, and I have no need to go out here because if we believe what Abraham Maslow told us. If Dr. Maslow told us that you have this pyramid, the hierarchy of needs, and that food, clothing, shelters on the bottom, and that lawfulness is a little bit higher up, and if you don't have that bottom rung met ain't no way in the world you going to meet these top rungs, and so, what I suppose and what I propose to people is that we make sure that the bottom rung for all people is met and then we watch them move into lawfulness and engagement into autonomy, into self-actualization. That is my vision of a future where we inspire people as humanity and they begin to connect to their own humanity, and they realize that our humanities are directly tied to one another. Our liberation is directly tied because again, we cannot be free if there are people who are in bondage until the jails and the prisons are free until Guantanamo Bay is empty. We will always be seeking freedom and liberation in this country, and so if we really want to be the home of the free, the land of the brave, it does take a brave bunch of folks to reimaging a system that I am describing. But I think it's a cop out to just put people in the cage and walk away.

Megan Skull Williams [30:48]: Amen to that. So, if you have enjoyed listening to Christie, I think she is the keynote speaker at an upcoming conference, the Women in Recovery Conference. Is that right, Christie?

Christie Puckett Williams [31:00]: That's true. I am, I'll be speaking, the subject is Dignity for Incarcerated Pregnant Women, the impact of race, gender, and substance use on pregnancy and incarceration.

Megan Skull Williams [31:10]: And what day is that?

Christie Puckett Williams [31:12]: I think it's on May the 4th at nine 30.

Megan Skull Williams [31:17]: And so, assuming that this podcast is run before that time, we'll have information in the show notes about that conference, and also in the show notes, we will have connections to our website, incarceratedwomen'shealth.org. So, you can find lots of information about the New Dignity Act, some resources for folks who are incarcerated, their families as well as healthcare providers, corrections folks. We're trying to get as much information out as we can on all different levels, and just a reminder that we also have that nursing training that's available that we'll have a link to that, and we just finished up a short 30 ish minute training that's directed at corrections personnel and that we focused on the Dignity Act, as well as some really basic awareness about women's health information and pregnancy health information just to help corrections officers be more willing to get folks the help that they need when they need it, if they're, if they are in those Creston settings. What else am I forgetting, Christie? Is there anything else that I need to point out?

Christie Puckett Williams [32:26]: I think you've covered at all. There's so much happening, but I've started this work, what many people talking about the conditions of incarceration for pregnant women. So, it really makes my heart glad to hear that this work is happening, that people are interested. It's a conversation now. This is, we've done a really good job along the way of bringing more people in. So, I'm really excited to, to bring more folks to the fold who understand that being pregnant is hard enough, being pregnant while incarcerated is near impossible. Excuse my language.

Megan Skull Williams [33:00]: And you single-handedly Christie, have done a lot of this work and you're a fantastic advocate in Thank you. You're known by many of us as someone who is passionate about this topic. And I just want to thank you really from the bottom of my heart for sharing your experience, because I know it's not easy to tell that story over and over again. It was a really hard time in your life and I know it was a while ago, but I just so appreciate that you're willing to be vulnerable and share that with folks just to help folks that come behind you, and that's.

Christie Puckett Williams [33:35]: I don't think it should ever happen to anyone else, honestly.

Megan Skull Williams [33:38]: May it be so.

Christie Puckett Williams [33:39]: May it be so, thank you Mega.

Megan Skull Williams [33:42]: All right, thank you so much.

Christie Puckett Williams [33:43]: All right. I'll see you soon. Okay, bye.

Outro [33:54]: Such a fantastic episode. Some of my favorite parts were those tips for our healthcare providers and how to, again, care compassionately for incarcerated pregnant people. Tap into your empathy. Remind them of their humanity. Christie, thank you so much, Megan you as well. We really appreciate you all time and again, just a great episode. So, if you are liking what you're hearing, we would love to ask you to fill out our feedback survey. There's a link in the show notes below, so if you want to jump down there, click that link. You can give us your feedback, what we're doing well, you, things we can improve on, as well as suggest topics for future episodes and future seasons. Please rate us five stars, share us with your networks, keep downloading our episodes, and we appreciate your time and your listening ears. So, until next time, thanks.