To save others a click, this is about artificially starting the birth of a baby, not about a 13th-amendment prison slavery complaint. Which is similarly vile, but another topic.
> "They induce us all now so that we don't go into labor in prison."
I'd be curious what the power structure looks like between the prison medical staff and these women's primary care providers/obstetricians. At some point, a small number of women will need advice from a doctor that if they haven't begun labor naturally, they should get it induced. But definitely not universally 39 weeks, and definitely not to someone who primarily answers to the prison rather than to the patient.
Inducing every pregnant woman for scheduling convenience is a terrible human rights violation if you place anything close to a reasonable value on the health of the mother and the baby compared to the convenience of prison guards. The baby will be ready when the baby's ready, an inability to schedule that to something tighter than a 3-4 week window is just a fact of biology that the state needs to accept.
Prison medical staff are not obstetricians. They're usually family practitioners. And while old-time family doctors used to deliver babies, most newer grads have minimal experience because the astronomical cost of malpractice insurance for delivering one baby means they just won't ever do it. General medical issues, not childbirth.
In my experience, prisons usually have a contract with one hospital or system in the state to care for issues too complex for prison healthcare.
No, sorry, it's a summary and a quote from the original article. I merely tried to distinguish between "Inducing birth labor" and "Inducing slave labor," as the parent poster seemed confused by the ambiguity; the Wikipedia article merely tells you which of these two commonly known forms of induced labor the original article is focused on.
"Labor induction is a medical procedure that stimulates childbirth and delivery. It can be done with pharmaceutical or non-pharmaceutical methods and is estimated to be used in about 25% of pregnant women in Western countries. Medical reasons for inducing labor include postterm pregnancy, intrauterine fetal growth restriction, health risks to the mother, premature rupture of the membranes, premature termination of the pregnancy, fetal death in utero, twin pregnancy after 38 weeks, and certain health conditions in the mother. Methods of inducing labor include medication, mechanical or physical approaches such as artificial rupture of membranes or membrane sweeping, and intrauterine catheters. Medications used for induction include prostaglandins, synthetic oxytocin, and mifepristone. Non-pharmaceutical methods include acupuncture, herbal remedies, and sexual intercourse. Inducing labor at or after term is generally believed to improve outcomes for newborns and reduce the number of cesarean sections."
(I did not proof read any of this, take with a grain of salt)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_induction