Jail Denied Woman's Abortion and Forced Her to Give Birth
Kei’Choura Cathey was in jail when she realized she was pregnant.
But when she asked the Maury County, Tennessee sheriff’s office to obtain an abortion, she claims in a new lawsuit they denied her on the grounds that her pregnancy was not life-threatening. When she finally left jail, it was too late for her to legally terminate the pregnancy.
Access to abortion, already limited for many Americans, can be even more complicated for incarcerated women. While inmates have a constitutional right to health care, inmates’ abortion rights are the subject of a murky set of policies that vary state by state, and even county by county. In her $1.5 million suit against Maury County and its sheriff, Cathey says her decision was left to the whims of county officials, who deemed the procedure unnecessary. She gave birth in April 2016.
Cathey, 29, realized she was pregnant two weeks after her arrest July 2016 arrest for aggravated robbery and conspiracy to commit murder. Facing a million-dollar bond, she couldn’t afford to bond out of jail for the procedure. Within a month of discovering the pregnancy, she contacted Maury County Sheriff Bucky Rowland, informing him of her wish to obtain an abortion. Without an official abortion policy at the jail, Cathey’s access to the procedure depended on the sheriff’s decision. But he allegedly refused to provide transportation to or funding for the procedure, calling her abortion unnecessary if Cathey’s life wasn’t at risk.