Article from Reason by C.J. Ciaramella.

Shortly after arriving at a federal prison in Georgia in the early 2000s,Pamela discovered she was five to six weeks pregnant. No one told her the facility was designed for men, she says, and the staff hadn’t been expecting any female inmates, much less a pregnant one. Inmates are often moved around in vans, and whenever Winn was transported she was shackled by the ankles and wrists. The wrist cuffs were in turn shackled to a chain that wrapped around her belly.

It was during one of these transports that Winn—who is only 5’1″—fell trying to climb into a van. “My wrists being secured to the belly chain on me, it was like a tree falling,” Winn says. “There was no way for me to break my fall. I couldn’t move or do anything but fall. From that point is when I started bleeding.”

A fourth, follow-up appointment never occurred, because roughly around 20 weeks into her pregnancy, Winn miscarried.

Today, members of Congress introduced a bill that aims to make sure what happened to Winn never happens to anyone else. Cosponsored by a majority of Democratic and Republican women in the House, the bill would ban the shackling and solitary confinement of pregnant inmates in the federal prison system.

Read the entire article at Reason.