Controlling Women: Reasons to Worry About the Scott Sisters

by Caroline Picker

On The Issues Magazine
February 17, 2011

http://www.ontheissuesmagazine.com/cafe2/article/139

What would you trade for your freedom? Why you should care
about the Scott sisters if you care about reproductive
health?

Recently, Gladys and Jamie Scott were released from prison
after 16 years. Each received a lifetime sentence for
allegedly assisting with the theft of $11. The Scotts were
released on suspended charges: they will both be on parole
for the rest of their lives. As a condition of her release,
Gladys is required to donate one of her kidneys to Jamie,
who suffers from kidney failure and receives regular
dialysis treatment. In her petition for freedom, Gladys
voluntarily offered this donation. Mississippi Governor
Haley Barbour mandated her kidney donation in order for her
to be freed.

Reproductive freedom is the ability to make informed choices
about your own body, free from coercion. Reproductive
freedom is about access to needed healthcare and resources.
As feminist advocates for health, we know that our bodies
consist of so much more than our uteruses (or lack thereof)
and that choice is about so much more than whether to become
pregnant or not, whether to stay pregnant or not. Bodily
integrity and the ability to make conscious choices about
our own bodies and lives are basic human rights. The Scott
sisters' case raises the question: is the prison system
antithetical to reproductive freedom?

Healthcare in prison is shoddy at best, fatal at worst.
Incarcerated people are routinely denied access to crucial
medications for established conditions, such as HIV,
diabetes and hepatitis C, as well as preventative
screenings. Fatalities in prison due to inadequate
healthcare are extremely difficult to document; however, in
California alone, it is estimated that one person in prison
dies every week due to inadequate healthcare.

Jamie Scott had been denied treatment for her life-
threatening kidney condition while incarcerated, and her
release is timed just before she receives a needed kidney
transplant in a move that Barbour himself acknowledged is to
save money. To save the state the expense of hospital
transport and care during and after birth, pregnant women
are not uncommonly freed just prior to delivery, according
to informal conversations with people who work in prisons
and jails. Women are routinely denied access to abortions in
prison.

In the Scott sisters' case, the tentacles of the prison
system clearly demonstrate its ability to restrict body
autonomy for those not incarcerated, but still within the
grips of the system. On any given day, five million people
in the U.S. are birth control implants have historically
been imposed on some women as a condition of probation. The
mandating of Gladys Scott's kidney donation continues this
legacy of bodily control.

Because over 70 percent of people enmeshed in the prison
system are people of color, healthcare concerns within
prison, on probation and on parole, have a disproportionate
affect on the community. As black women, the Scott sisters
were six times more likely than white women to be
incarcerated in the first place. Barbour's explicit ties
with white supremacist groups and his advocacy of racial
segregation have been widely publicized. However, Barbour's
stated opinions, as well as decision on the Scott sisters'
case, are not exceptional. Our society depends on the prison
industry, which provides enormous profits to corporate
interests, as a way to obscure and enable the social ills
caused by catastrophically intertwined webs of oppression,
such as racism and sexism. Controlling people's bodies to
maintain a hierarchical social order is familiar to
reproductive freedom advocates: controlling women's bodies
has long been used as a tool to disable feminist organizing
and revolt.

Ultimately, the story of the Scott sisters is far from
unique in its denial of respectful healthcare and informed
choices about their own bodies. Sure, Gladys originally
proposed that she donate a kidney to her ailing sister;
however, when the state mandated her donation as a condition
of her release, her choice was superseded by the prison
system's authority over her body. Both women have been
deprived of reproductive freedom via these actions,
demonstrating the prison system's ability to infiltrate even
the most intimate of decisions.

No one's prison sentence explicitly includes lack of access
to reliable and safe healthcare and the dismantling of
choice. Perhaps little more can be expected from a system
based on control and punitive justice. However, the prison
system extends its tentacles to maintain a firm grasp on
those who have been released. A history of incarceration can
violate someone's most fundamental right: the right to
ownership of and decision-making about her own body. In the
struggle for reproductive freedom, we should not forget
about those struggling with the violence and control of the
prison system. If one of us is chained, then none of us are
free.

[Caroline Picker is a queer writer, activist, and
healthworker. She believes in a safe and just world without
prisons. Her writing has appeared in "make/shift" and
"Saltwater Quarterly," and is forthcoming in "Bitch
Magazine" and the anthology, "Queering Sexual Violence."]

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