“Undocumented Women Forced To Give Birth While Shackled And In Police Custody” vs. “Biopower, Reproduction, and The Migrant Woman’s Body”

The two articles “Undocumented Women Forced To Give Birth While Shackled And In Police Custody” and “Biopower, Reproduction, and The Migrant Woman’s Body” both shed light on an issue that we do not hear about very often most likely because the American government knows that they are doing something inhumane and they don’t want Americans to know about it. Both articles are very educational on a subject matter that should be talked about more in today's society.
     “Undocumented Women Forced To Give Birth While Shackled And In Police Custody” told stories of immigrant woman who were forced to deal with the brutalities of police officers while they were giving birth. In 36 states it is legal to shackle an immigrant woman while she is giving birth. Although most people would think this is an inhumane process, it is still legal in more than half of our country. In Miriam Mendiola-Martinez’s case she got chained to a hospital bed and was not allowed to have any family members by her side during the delivery process. As a woman myself, I think of how much I would rely on my friends and family during that delivery process. Something that I found to be just as inhumane as being chained to a bed during the delivery process is that she got her new born baby taken from her within 48 hours of being delivered. This also strikes me hard because I could not imagine having my new born baby taken away from me like that. Alma Chacon shared a similar experience as Miriam: “Chacon was allegedly not allowed to nurse or hold her baby until she was released from immigration custody almost 70 days later”(Constantini). On another hand, one woman was set into labor by how brutally she was treated by a local enforcement agent. Then, they accused her of faking her contractions while she was in labor. Reading these stories of these women were cringeworthy and upsetting to realize that these things were happening in our very own country.
    In “Biopower, Reproduction, and The Migrant Woman’s Body” it allows readers to understand as to why the government thought it was okay to do what they do to these women. Jonathan Xavier Inda writes “power would no longer be dealing simply with legal subjects over whom the ultimate dominion was death, but with living beings, and the mastery it would be able to exercise over them would be applied at the level of life itself, it was the taking charge of life, more than the threat of death, that gave power its access even to the body...political power has assigned itself the duty of managing life.”(Inda). Inda explains to us that this is just another way that America can take control and have power over immigrants. However, by doing this it has leaked that American officials put values on different people’s lives and this shows that they completely do not value immigrants lives at all. Some people believe that the way immigrants are being treated is right because they believe “providing such assistance is unwise, for it acts as a magnet for illicit immigration”(Inda). On the other hand some people would argue that is is “an attempt to govern the reproduction of an undesirable population”(Inda). Former Governor Pete Wilson proposed Proposition 187 where one of the main aims of this proposition was to eliminate non-emergency medical care for women in the country illegally. But the backfire on this proposition is that it would cause: “unwaranted suffering, avoidable birth complications, sicker, smaller babies and needless disability”(Inda).
    In both these articles we have our eyes opened to the inhumane realities of the U.S. government towards immigrants. We see how brutal the American government is through their roughness with women during their delivery process in “Undocumented Women Forced To Give Birth While Shackled And In Police Custody” and also that the United States government does not value immigrants lives as much as they value non immigrant lives.