A mother has filed a federal lawsuit against Houston County in the southeastern part of Alabama, alleging that her constitutional rights were violated when she was forced to deliver a premature baby without any medical help while detained in the county jail.
The civil action, submitted to a federal court in the recent week, holds the county, the jail, and the involved officers responsible in part for a flagrant disregard of serious medical needs and the denial of care in violation of the 14th Amendment.
Tiffany McElroy, who was 34 weeks along with a history of preterm labor, was taken into custody on May 23, 2024, on chemical endangerment charges, according to the complaint brought on her behalf by the nonprofit Pregnancy Justice. The charge, which pertains to exposing a child, including a fetus, to a controlled substance or drug paraphernalia, arose from assertions that McElroy used substances during her pregnancy.
In the early hours of May 26, 2024, while she remained at Houston County Jail, McElroy notified jail staff and officers that her water had broken. Premature rupture of membranes before 37 weeks is treated as a medical emergency, placing both mother and baby at substantial risk of infection, sepsis, and preterm birth. Yet, according to the complaint, “despite her obvious signs of labor,” no one from the jail came to assist.
Instead, she asserts that nearly a full day passed without any medical aid for her preterm labor. Although she did meet with the jail’s physician assistant and a nurse several hours after her water broke, McElroy received only a diaper and ibuprofen, even though her fetus displayed signs of an elevated heart rate. Her repeated pleas to be transported to a hospital were reportedly ignored.
As her abdominal pain continued to intensify and amniotic fluid kept leaking, McElroy was compelled to attend her initial court appearance and to move around the jail without assistance, the filing states.
As McElroy’s labor advanced into the second night, “other women detained in the jail repeatedly alerted jail staff to the emergency…but jail staff rarely responded,” and the complaint adds that there was “no effort of any kind of emergency medical assessment or assistance.” By the early morning of May 27, 2024, McElroy was crying out in pain and felt the urge to push.
Nevertheless, the jail staff did not intervene. In fact, one officer allegedly told McElroy that she was forbidden from calling 911 or helping her because “she and the jail could be held accountable if anything happened to [McElroy] or her baby,” the lawsuit contends. Additional detained women were allegedly threatened with tasers and other penalties for attempting to assist with the delivery as contractions slowed. “Despite these threats,” the complaint notes, other women in McElroy’s pod insisted on aiding in the delivery as her contractions waned.
When McElroy’s baby finally arrived, the infant “was not crying or breathing” at first, but thanks to the quick thinking of another detainee who “suctioned the baby’s mouth and nose three times and stimulated the chest…the baby started breathing,” according to the complaint. It was only after the birth that officers transported McElroy and her baby to the hospital, with one officer reportedly telling the pod: “Y’all should’ve pushed that motherfucking baby back in.”
More than 24 hours after her water broke, the preterm baby was moved to the neonatal intensive care unit, and McElroy received treatment for a serious bacterial infection that can occur when the amniotic sac is ruptured for an extended period, Pregnancy Justice notes. McElroy also underwent a blood transfusion due to the amount of blood she lost during delivery.
“I’m so grateful that my baby and I are here today, and I owe that to other women because the guards treated me like I was less than nothing,” McElroy said in a statement.
Alabama currently incarcerates more women for endangering their pregnancies than any other state, according to Karen Thompson, legal director at Pregnancy Justice. “From June 2022 to June 2024…Alabama prosecuted 192 women on pregnancy-related charges, mostly for alleged drug use during pregnancy,” AL.com reports. Alabama is followed by Oklahoma (112 prosecutions), South Carolina (62), and then Texas and Mississippi (each with 9), based on Pregnancy Justice’s analysis.
Whether it is prudent to use criminal justice measures against pregnant women for alleged substance use is debatable, but what happened to McElroy clearly violated her rights and dignity. She faces a difficult uphill battle to hold the government actors who denied her and her child proper medical care accountable.
