Black reproductive rights leaders with the Planned Parenthood Action Council of North County met Dec. 11 to discuss how Black elected officials can collaborate with activists to ensure reproductive rights from bedrooms to prison cells.
County Prosecutor Wesley Bell was the special guest at the Zoom meeting and spoke on the topic of women’s health risks in jails and prisons.
“We’ve progressively expanded our diversion unit…because there are a majority of people who come through our doors who are just in need of help. They haven’t harmed anybody… They need care, rather than sending them through the cycle of incarceration,” Wesley Bell said.
Teona McGhaw-Boure’, Black organizing regional lead for Planned Parenthood, said at a recent voting rights event, she realized “at Planned Parenthood, we need to do a better job uplifting Black voices,” both locally and statewide.
So, the North County Action Council hopes to bring Black communities together on reproductive health issues, many of which – such as disproportionate maternal mortality rates, and other pregnancy related risks– overwhelmingly affect Black women.
“We are so excited about what this group is doing, and the partnership that is being forged with Planned Parenthood to bring communities together in north county,” Cynthia Bennet, a member of the North County action council, said.
Bell’s presence at Saturday’s meeting was to some degree a response to the recent Supreme Court ruling on a Texas case legal experts say is likely to lead the country towards overturning Roe v. Wade. In their Dec. 10 ruling, the Supreme Court upheld Texas’ statewide ban on abortion, emboldening anti-choice advocates and opening the door for other states to do the same.
“We are seeing a Supreme Court that is at the very least flirting with the idea of taking away women’s…human rights,” Bell said. “We have to make sure that we’re proactive, that we continue the fight, even if they rule in our favor this time.”
He added he is a firmly pro-choice prosecutor.
“I want to let you all know that I stand with you, and that goes for my office, as long as I occupy these spaces,” he said.
Bell then outlined some of his office’s programs geared towards minimizing the damage the criminal prosecution and incarceration system does to the mental and physical health of the women caught up in it. Nationally, more and more women have been incarcerated in the past few decades. There are eight times as many women involved in the criminal justice system now as there were in 1980, according to the ACLU.
Bell’s reform programs include one intended to keep people out of that system in the first place: the diversion program, which has expanded in terms of staffing and capacity since Bell took office in 2018.
Through the diversion program, those charged with low-level offenses are redirected towards mental health assistance, housing aid, and jobs assistance rather than imprisoned. According to studies from the Center for Prison Reform, nationwide, diversion programs such as Bell’s decrease recidivism rates by about 10%.
“We’ve progressively expanded our diversion unit…because there are a majority of people who come through our doors who are just in need of help. They haven’t harmed anybody…they need care, rather than sending them through the cycle of incarceration,” Bell said.
Among the 1,200 people who’ve been through the diversion program so far, Bell said, recidivism rates stay much lower than those of people who go to jail: only 8% of those who go through the diversion program re-offend.
These programs are particularly critical for women, Bell explained because if a mother is incarcerated, her child is much more statistically likely to see the inside of a jail cell at some point in their lifetime.
“If you keep an individual out of prison, they’re significantly less likely to re-offend. So why don’t we just do that?” he said.
Bell also spoke about the conditions facing women in prisons, who often don’t have access to proper menstrual care products, to say nothing of those who might experience pregnancy while incarcerated and may lack the healthcare they so desperately need at such a critical time.
Nonprofit groups like Missouri Appleseed are working on the issue of menstrual supplies and women’s healthcare in prison, and Congresswoman Bush and Mayor Jones recently announced a collaborative investigation of the issue. But, Bell said, there is still work to be done.
“We don’t do a good job of taking care of people, but especially women…you can look at issues of pregnancy in prison and things of that nature,” he said. “Someone coming into jail, if they’re pregnant, for example…they’re already high risk.”
So, when there are women in the justice center where Bell works, especially pregnant women, he turns to his team to help, including health experts from Affinia and reproductive care workers from Planned Parenthood.
At the end of the meeting, Cynthia Bennett asked the question on everyone’s mind: would Bell prosecute women accused of terminating a pregnancy, should such an act become entirely illegal? Rather than sending such women to an unsympathetic attorney general, Bell said, he’d rather keep their cases in the lower courts. If he absolutely must prosecute, assign the most minimal sentence possible.
“As far as I can control, I would not prosecute any case like that, period,” he said. “But if I was presented with a situation where the Attorney General would be able to take that case…there are things that we can do.”
The Planned Parenthood Action Council of North County plans to hold future events discussing topics such as Black men’s reproductive healthcare.
