CLEVELAND — A Cleveland lawmaker hopes a newly introduced bill in the state house will both save lives and protect pregnant women serving time in Ohio’s jails and prisons.
House Bill 542 would require the pregnancy outcomes of women incarcerated in Ohio jails and prisons to be reported to the state’s Department of Corrections.
Representative Terrence Upchurch introduced the bill after News 5 Investigators and Marshall Project Cleveland discovered there was no requirement for county jails to report pregnancy outcomes in Ohio.
Watch our report:
RELATED: Ohio’s failure to track lost pregnancies in jails spurs questions over care
This, despite years of recommendations by doctors and experts nationwide.
“I think that if we're not looking for problems, if we're not aware of problems, they're not going to be found,” Dr. Michael Baldonieri, an assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, said in May.
Unlike if a man or woman dies in custody, there is no requirement that jails and prisons in Ohio report pregnancy outcomes to the state.
“Miscarriages and stillbirths absolutely do happen in county jails,” said Dr. Carolyn Sufrin, a Fellow with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “We just don’t know how often they happen.”
It’s an issue that came to light after Linda Acoff lost her pregnancy to a miscarriage inside the Cuyahoga County jail in January 2024.
Acoff was in jail, accused of failing to complete court-ordered mental health treatment.
The 29-year-old was pregnant and began experiencing pain and bleeding. Acoff said she went to the hospital but then returned to jail even as problems continued.
She said she begged for help and was finally seen by a nurse.
Jailhouse video showed that the nurse went to Acoff’s cell and then left the jail’s pregnancy unit less than two minutes later.
Acoff said all she received were extra sanitary napkins and Tylenol.
Seventeen hours later, Acoff, four months into her pregnancy, miscarried in her jail cell.
“It’s a very painful experience to think about it,” Acoff said last spring. “It was a traumatic experience when you don’t receive the help that you need when I felt like they could have saved my baby.”
A review of Acoff’s case by the jail’s medical provider found “an egregious performance failure.”
A nurse was fired.
Watch more about Acoff's story:
RELATED: Ohio lawmaker wants to require jails to report pregnancy outcomes
Upchurch called the story of what happened to Acoff heartbreaking.
“Any time that a mother loses her child during birth, it’s horrific,” he said.
Last fall, records show a state jail advisory board considered requiring jails to report miscarriages to the
state, but that issue was tabled.
Since others failed to act, Upchurch did, introducing the requirement last week.
He feels it’s important to know how often miscarriages are happening to women behind bars to improve health outcomes for mothers and their babies.
“Then we can put another system in place that’s more preventive, right?” said Upchurch. “Maybe some things that we’re doing as a state now, are not the best things we should be doing to prevent these instances from happening.”
The bill is co-sponsored by Upchurch, a Democrat and Rep. Josh Williams, a Republican from Northwest Ohio.
Upchurch said he’s willing to work with interested parties to, in his words, “make a good bill a better bill,” as it moves through the legislative process.
