Two female inmates in New Jersey’s Edna Mahan Correctional Facility are pregnant after “consensual sexual relationships with another incarcerated person.”
The state Department of Corrections did not identify which of the 27 transgender inmates fathered the unborn children, according to NJ Advance Media. New Jersey has allowed convicts to be housed in prisons according to their preferred gender identify since 2021 and does not require transgender women to go through gender reassignment surgery, the New York Post reported.
The change in law was made after the ACLU brought a lawsuit against the New Jersey Department of Corrections in August 2019, according to the ACLU-NJ website. “This settlement comes at a time of heightened scrutiny of New Jersey’s prison system, and the state needs to commit fully to ensuring the dignity, health, and safety of people in their custody. This policy is a start and addresses the needs of some of the most vulnerable people in state prisons,” ACLU-NJ Legal Director Jeanne LoCicero said in 2021.
LoCicero continued to defend the policy Tuesday, saying its “in line with New Jersey’s strong anti-discrimination laws that prevent discrimination and harassment on the basis of gender identity,” the Daily Mail reported.
The 27 transgender inmates reside with 800 women at the facility, according to the NY Post. Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy announced plans to close the prison after a “long history of abusive incidents,” the New York Times reported in 2021. Edna Mahan is New Jersey’s only women’s prison, Fox News noted.
A year ago, the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in New Jersey began to host “trans women” (men who say they are women), with no requirement for reassignment surgery. Now, two inmates are pregnant via the same “trans woman”. The sex was at least consensual https://t.co/CdkB7gmDm5
— Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) April 14, 2022
There is an ongoing investigation into the matter, Dan Sperrazza, the external affairs executive director for the DOC, said, NJ Advance Media reported. (RELATED: Comedian Alex Stein Attends City Council Meeting In Women’s Swimsuit, Claims To Be Trans)
“Pregnancy is a predictable outcome of housing men in women’s prisons,” legal director for the Women’s Liberation Front, Lauren Adams, told the Daily Caller. “We are also gravely concerned at the biased media coverage we are seeing on this story, with many outlets saying that a ‘transgender woman’ or ‘transgender female’ has impregnated women. This is, of course, nonsense. Only men are capable of fathering children, and it is irresponsible to pretend otherwise.”
In 2021, two female prisoners at Edna Mahan filed lawsuits that alleged they were harassed by transgender prisoners, the Daily Mail noted. The prisoners noted in their suits that the transgender inmates were having sex with female inmates, the outlet reported.