The woman, nearly eight months pregnant, who had been held in the women's section of the Cagliari-Uta prison has been transferred to a therapeutic community.
Maria Grazia Caligaris, president of the "Socialismo Diritti Riforme" association, which accompanied the young drug addict to the University Hospital, announced: "She will spend her final weeks, awaiting delivery, at the Emmaus Community in Iglesias. The solution was found thanks to coordination between the Penitentiary Directorate, the Institute's Health and Security departments, the Hospital's Gynecology Unit, the Regional Ombudsman for Detainees, and the Director of the Emmaus Community. This collaboration was crucial for the Judge, who then ordered the young woman's transfer."
The girl, in her early twenties, was carrying an imminent and risky pregnancy with the real risk of premature birth and without the necessary assistance.
"This positive solution," Caligaris continues, " must not obscure the fact that the presence in prison of a pregnant woman or a woman with a newborn baby is not only a disgrace because it puts the life of the newborn at risk, but also creates serious hardship for the entire detention facility, especially where overcrowding and the lack of a clinical center in the women's section require constant hospital care, requiring the deployment of ambulances and prison guards for escorts ."
"It is well known that both the gestation period and the perinatal period and the first years of life require a healthy environment, including food and air quality, for the growth of the fetus and/or newborn, and for the well-being of the pregnant woman," the president of SDR reminds us. A prison, even a women's section with a nursery, cannot guarantee adequate conditions. Nor can we forget that unborn children or newborns are blotting paper; they therefore absorb everything around them. In Sardinia, since an ICAM (Institute with Attenuated Custody for Detained Mothers) is not available, local governments must make an effort to provide protected spaces for the rare cases of pregnant women or mothers with newborns with legal problems. This will allow the judiciary to avoid resorting to prison and also to separate detained mothers from their closest relatives. Without forgetting that the children are innocent. The hope is that the story of the young pregnant prisoner – he concludes – can become a positive example of collaboration to prevent it from happening again."
(Unioneonline/D)