My reproductive health rights vanished while in prison

I knew going to prison for a nonviolent drug offense would mean losing some of my freedoms, but I didn’t know it meant giving up my fundamental reproductive rights.

I gave birth to my daughter in 2024 while serving time in the Illinois Department of Corrections. I entered Logan Correctional Center in downstate Illinois when I was about 7½ months pregnant. I knew going in that I would give birth while still inside prison, but I expected it would happen when the baby was ready. I expected to go into labor naturally.

However, within hours of being processed at Logan, that expectation was shattered. Staff and other women at the prison told me I would be scheduled for an induction of my labor sometime before my due date because that is what happens to all the pregnant women at Logan. It freaked me out to hear this because I was afraid of what induction could mean for my baby and me. At first, I hoped this was just talk. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

When I had my first appointment with the prison’s OB-GYN a few days later, it became clear that what I had heard was not idle prison gossip. The doctor told me I would be scheduled for an induction procedure before my due date and would be taken to a hospital in Springfield to give birth to my daughter at a time set by the Department of Corrections, not by my own body.

I knew this was absolutely not what I wanted when it came to giving birth to my daughter. I was extremely upset and anxious. I filed formal grievances and told everyone I could — from medical providers to various prison staff — that I did not wish to undergo an induction. But everyone I tried to talk to either ignored me or told me it had to be done that way because it was the prison’s policy. One staff person just scoffed at my protest, suggesting that women in prison should not get to make any of their own decisions.

For about a month, I kept hoping something would change and I would be saved from having to undergo an induction I did not want. After the date for the induction was set, I became even more stressed out. Then, two full weeks before my due date, I was awakened early in the morning and put into the back of a van to be driven about an hour to the hospital. I was accompanied to the hospital and the delivery room by two corrections officers — one male and one female — who stayed with me during the entire process.

A final plea ignored

At the hospital, I made one final plea and told the doctor I did not want to be induced, but no one really listened or spoke to me. The induction went forward against my will, and my daughter was born just a few hours later.

After that, I spent a few months with my daughter in the prison nursery program at Decatur Correctional Center. I have now been out for nearly two years.

From the beginning, I knew what was happening to me was wrong. I knew I was supposed to have rights, despite what everyone in the prison kept telling me. I knew Illinois has laws that are supposed to protect the ability of a pregnant woman to make her own health care decisions — a law I now know is called the Illinois Reproductive Health Act.

That law says everyone in our state has the right to make their own decisions about their reproductive health, including decisions around childbirth, without the government interfering with that decision, and it protects people who are in prison, like I was. I am now suing the Illinois Department of Corrections and others for violating my rights under that law as well as my constitutional rights.

When people ask me why I have filed my lawsuit, the answer is easy. I do not want anyone else in IDOC custody to have to go through the same situation I did, where they are denied the ability to make their own decisions about their body. I want them to know they do have rights, and they should not be afraid to claim them.

Amy Hicks, who lives downstate, is suing the state of Illinois, alleging she was forced to give birth to her daughter via induction without her consent while incarcerated. She is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois and Goldman Ismail Tomaselli Brennan & Baum LLP.