Filed
6:30 p.m. EDT
10.27.2025
A Marshall Challenge – Cleveland and Information 5 investigation helped spark a bipartisan invoice to trace being pregnant outcomes in Ohio jails and prisons.
State Rep. Terrence Upchurch, D-Cleveland.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers have launched laws requiring all Ohio jails and prisons to report the outcomes of each being pregnant that ends behind bars.
The proposal comes following a Marshall Challenge – Cleveland and Information 5 investigation that detailed how a Cleveland lady’s being pregnant ended after her repeated cries for assist went unanswered for hours within the troubled Cuyahoga County jail in 2024.
That being pregnant loss and the outcomes of different pregnant ladies in jail aren’t tracked by Ohio. At present, the state solely requires county jails to report in-custody deaths.
However advocates and medical medical doctors have referred to as the dearth of reporting for failed pregnancies a blind spot for ladies’s well being care behind bars.
If handed, Home Invoice 542 would require all county and metropolis jails and state prisons to report the outcomes of pregnancies yearly to the Ohio Division of Rehabilitation and Correction. The measure doesn’t observe pregnancies as soon as a girl is launched from custody.
The first sponsors of the proposal, state Reps. Terrence Upchurch, a Democrat from Cleveland, and Josh Williams, a Republican from the Toledo space, launched the measure Oct. 22. One different Republican and 4 Democrats signed on as co-sponsors.
“This is a chance to show that we’re a pro-life state by defending pregnant ladies and selling wholesome, pregnant outcomes,” Upchurch informed The Marshall Challenge – Cleveland.
Critics say the dearth of reporting necessities in jails makes it unattainable to know whether or not any of the nation’s greater than 3,000 jails are failing pregnant ladies. A Cuyahoga County spokesperson declined to remark.
State Rep. Crystal Lett (D-Columbus), one of many co-sponsors and a mom of three, mentioned the laws is required to assist enhance mortality charges.
“It’s deeply vital that we shield all mothers and to make it possible for we’re offering prenatal care, no matter incarceration,” she mentioned.
In Could, the information shops detailed how Linda Acoff, almost 5 months pregnant, screamed in ache for hours inside her cell on the Cuyahoga County jail. A nurse, who was later fired, provided solely further sanitary napkins and a dose of Tylenol.
Acoff’s situation worsened earlier than her cellmate alerted a jailer, and he or she was taken by stretcher from the jail’s being pregnant pod. Left behind have been the stays of Acoff’s fetus, a lady misplaced at 17 weeks, in accordance with the Cuyahoga County medical expert.
It was later decided that Acoff misplaced her being pregnant attributable to a standard, however untreated, an infection.
Acoff couldn’t be reached for touch upon the proposal.
Dr. Carolyn Sufrin, director of the Advocacy and Analysis on Reproductive Wellness of Incarcerated Folks program, is anxious that the proposal is simply too restricted by the info being collected.
She mentioned the measure, as presently written, fails to outline phrases and kinds of outcomes to be reported resembling dwell births, nonetheless births, miscarriages and spontaneous abortion.
“I fear facility leaders would interpret it in their very own manner and never report full, customary being pregnant outcomes,” Sufrin wrote in a press release.
However Dr. Michael Baldonieri, an assistant professor of reproductive biology on the Case Western Reserve College College of Medication, mentioned the invoice is a good begin to wider reforms for susceptible sufferers in jails.
“Traditionally, incarcerated people have suffered by the hands of medical inequity, and making these end result information obtainable for evaluation is step one in direction of taking concrete actions to enhance being pregnant outcomes,” Baldonieri mentioned in a press release.
Baldonieri can be a member of the Ohio Being pregnant-Related Mortality Assessment Committee, which was created in 2010 to develop interventions to scale back maternal mortality, significantly for pregnancy-related deaths.
Upchurch mentioned he anticipated some modifications to the proposal as legislators hear testimony from stakeholders and medical suppliers.
“We’re open-minded and could have the discussions to make invoice and even higher invoice for the state of Ohio,” Upchurch mentioned.
