Born Captive
By Starling Thomas
Every pregnant person deserves to give birth in dignity. No one should labor alone in a jail cell, in shackles, or separated from their child because of incarceration.
POSTER PLACEHOLDER
Born Captive follows Naomi, a pregnant Black woman arrested over unpaid probation fees and forced to labor alone inside a jail cell. As she fights to survive childbirth, ancestral memories connect her story to generations of women whose bodies, pregnancies, and motherhood were controlled by systems of oppression. The film exposes prison birth as a preventable human rights crisis and calls for an end to the incarceration of pregnant people.
About the Issue
Thousands of pregnant women enter jails and prisons every year, often for low-level offenses, despite the availability of safer and more effective alternatives. Prison birth remains one of the least visible forms of reproductive injustice in the United States.
An estimated 55,000+ pregnant women pass through U.S. jails and prisons every year. Three out of four incarcerated women are of childbearing age, and until 2023, no federal agency had ever systematically collected national data on pregnant incarcerated people. [Cite][Cite][Cite]
Black women are incarcerated at nearly three times the rate of white women. One in 18 Black women will experience incarceration in her lifetime, compared to one in 111 white women. [Cite]
Over 80% of perinatal nurses report that their incarcerated patients were shackled "sometimes to all of the time" during pregnancy or postpartum, despite anti-shackling laws existing in roughly 40 states. [Cite]
Prison birth is not inevitable. It is a policy choice.
Take Action
Support efforts to end incarceration of pregnant people
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Ask Lawmakers to End Prison Birth
Contact your elected officials to advocate for community-based alternatives to incarceration for pregnant people.
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Learn more about or support Starling’s other film projects.
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Interested in watching Born Captive or bringing it to your campus, organization, coalition, faith community, conference, or community event to spark conversations about births behind bars?
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