Senator Lidia Thorpe has introduced a bill to prohibit the practice in Australian prisons that advocates say violates the human rights of both mother and child.
Isaac says officers handcuffed her fellow prisoner in the back of a van and took her away.
In her submission to a federal inquiry into shackling during childbirth, she says many woman who have experienced it “still think about the time they gave birth to their child cuffed to the bed, years later”.
Lidia Thorpe, the Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung woman and independent senator for Victoria, has introduced a private member’s bill to prohibit shackling during childbirth.
On Wednesday, Thorpe told the Senate about Heather Calgaret, a Yamatji, Noongar, Wongi and Pitjantjatjara woman, and mother of four children.
In 2019, she gave birth while shackled to a hospital bed in Victoria.
According to an August report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, about one in 10 of Australia’s prisoners are women.
The only data on giving birth while incarcerated was from 2017, when 25 women gave birth.
Fifteen years ago, the UN general assembly adopted the Bangkok Rules on the treatment of female prisoners, which state that prison should be a last resort for pregnant women and that “instruments of restraint shall never be used on women during labour, during birth and immediately after birth”.
The Australian College of Midwives has said it was also against the Mandela rules for the treatment of prisoners and shackling was “an unsafe and unnecessary practice that may result in adverse outcomes for women and newborns, perinatal mental ill-health”.