ms. laboywhen you're ready. >> good afternoon, everyone. and thank you for the opportunity to address you today. my name is karine laboy, and i reside in new britain, connecticut. my daughter has been incarcerated at york correctional institute in connecticut, since august 2017. my daughter was around six weeks pregnant when she entered your correctional. i stand before you today as a mother and grandmother to tell you about our family's experience. from the moment my daughter entered york, her pregnancy added a layer of fear and uncertainty to our lives. communication with her was very restricted, and i was denied contact for several weeks. when i finally heard her voice, she expressed a lot of distress and fear of being alone. she told me about times where she was denied adequate nutrition and medical attention. she was even threatened with solitary confinement for requesting to be sent to the infirmary. the prison staff forced her to choose between phone calls and recreation time, a cruel de

ms. laboy come out by saying her name right? >> yes, sir. >> your daughter was in a state prison? >> yes, york correctional. >> in georgia. >> york correctional in connecticut. >> well, i want to thank both of you for coming. i mean, your testimony was instructed but that sounds kind of sterile when you put it that way. it was also moving. i know these four colleagues well. hope we will have another hearing on the subject. i would like to sit down with them and others and try to figure how to address this problem. >> yeah. >> i've had this discussion with senator booker before. i think it, we need to address the issue of solitary confinement in our prisons. we need to involve law enforcement. i'm hoping that another hearing we will offer the georgia state officials the chance to come in and tell us what happened here, and offer constructive suggestions. i i guess what i'm saying is, i pledge to try to sit down and see if we can address this problem. i'm going to have to leave and a second. i do

and indeed this is what my and others' research has shown and what you've already heard from ms. laboys. umberger. there are no mandatory standards for pregnancy care of prisons and jails must follow. some research has shown access to such care is variable, often substandard, or even absent. for instance, in a survey my team conducted of all u.s. jails, only 31% did routine pregnancy testing within two weeks of arrival. so if jails don't test for pregnancy, then they can proceed as though there are no pregnant women in custody. this means many pregnant patients will have time sensitive medical needs that go unaddressed. my research is also documented alarming deficiencies in life-saving care for the estimated 8000 incarcerated pregnant women with opioid use disorder. although the long established standard of care in pregnancy is treatment with methadone or buprenorphine, international survey of jails, only 32% of them provided pregnant women with access to these medications. and even at the subtleties that did provide treatment in pregnancy, three-quarters of them forced patients to go