Pregnant prisoners endure inhumane treatment

Salon has a horrifying article about the inhumane treatment of pregnant prisoners in California. Just a couple of examples:
Anna (not her real name), a prisoner at Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, Calif., spent the last two weeks of her pregnancy in preterm labor, shackled to a hospital bed….
…California and at least 20 other states permit the chaining of laboring women to hospital beds, even when their attending physicians would prefer that they get up and walk around, or just shift from side to side. She also told me that women who return to prison from the hospital days after having Caesarean sections are routinely denied pain medication and even antibiotics.
…Take Judith (also not her real name), another Valley State prisoner, incarcerated on a probation violation for saying “Fuck you” to a case worker in a drug treatment program. Desperate to get into California’s Community Prisoner Mother Program, where children can stay with their mothers for up to six years in a residential facility, she was informed that she would first have to have an oral exam to prove that she had no dental problems, not even a cavity…In a cruel paradox, dental care is not provided to applicants to the program, other than extractions. No fillings, no cleanings. Nothing. Judith had myriad dental problems. According to [Karen] Shain [of Legal Services for Prisoners With Children], in order to be with her baby she had to have 15 teeth removed. She had no other choice.
Shain says this kind of treatment is not unusual. In fact, it’s routine. That’s right. Being shackled to a bed and having 15 teeth removed is routine.
Author Ayelet Waldman points out that most women in prison are not violent offenders–Anna for example, was serving a short sentence for drug possession and probation violation. But no matter what the violation, this shit is just obscene.
And sorry, but where is this reverence for the fetus now? Unnecessary shackling and tooth-pulling doesn’t exactly scream “culture of life.”