"I keep coming back to that image of a woman in labour in prison begging for someone to listen and take her seriously and get her medical help.  And instead she's put in segregation.  She's made fun of."
Bryonie Baxter, president of the Council of Elizabeth Fry Societies of Ontario

We are a kinder, gentler society.  And as such we have high regard for the human rights of all within society.  That does include to some degree those who, to use that quaint old phrase "run afoul of the law".  No longer are sociopaths and psychopaths who do grave harm to society cast into damp, dank, dark cells to languish, tossed crusts of stale bread and water to sustain their miserable lives. 

Now there are various grades of prisons, from low- to high-security in reflection of the types of crimes committed. Social malefactors and women of the night were once thrown into prisons, shackled and held alongside other of society's miscasts, misfits, social embarrassments.

 We most certainly have come a long way, here in Canada, where prisoners may do all manner of things reflective of the freedoms of general society; study, attend lectures, view television, have the use of computers, have exposure to training in some areas where knowledge may gain them employment once back on the streets.

Prisons have their own medical staff, sociologists, psychiatrists, nurses, should it be required that they are called upon to perform their professional duties in aid of prisoners.  But when Gionni Lee Garlow, arrested and placed at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre, asked for help because she was in labour, everyone at the prison simply ignored her pleas. 

And because she was so obstreperous, noisily calling attention to her condition and her pain and fear, she was moved to an isolated cell.

It has been reported that she screamed for hours.  Nurses on staff at the jail considered her, just as the guards did, a dreadful nuisance.  "They took her vitals.  They told her it was indigestion", said Bryonie Baxter, executive director of the Elizabeth Fry Society, a group advocating on behalf of women.  It was phantom labour, the eight-month-pregnant woman was assured.

When, finally, one of the nurses saw one of the baby's feet emerging in a breech-position birth, she called for an ambulance.  When paramedics arrived it was clear there was no time to be wasted, and they managed to deliver the little boy, on the floor of the segregated cell. 

That kind of complicated birth would most likely have proceeded in hospital with a C-section.  Instead a risky procedure given the nature of the birth was the only option at the prison.

Ontario's Minister of Community Safety and Correction Services, herself a former delivery-room nurse, emphasized that pregnant women in jail are meant to have normal care, just as any other expectant mother would have.  "They are followed by a doctor and when they go into labour they are transferred to the hospital.  That's the normal procedure" said Madeleine Meilleur.

The new mother remains in jail, awaiting trial on fraud and drug charges, though the minister said she should be released to be with her first child, until the trial date.  The baby, having overcome some initial breathing problems is currently in the care of his grandmother.  His was a rude introduction into the world.