Women’s experience during the Pap test
“My last one . . . was extremely painful. He was cramming the speculum in like [a] Roto-Rooter.” “Ninety-nine percent of the women have been abused or raped. To have a man take us into an office the size of a closet . . . stripped down . . . [it’s] rough and hurts us . . . it takes us right back to the beginning.” “It’s really open . . . where they do the Paps. It has a lot of windows and see-through curtains. This needs to change.” “Even though I’m in prison, I’m a human being just like everybody else. I’m no different.”
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Women’s experience with their medical providers
“Females have more understanding and can be more compassionate with Paps. It is kind of embarrassing for men to do it.” “I was never reassured by the doctor. There was no care and no time given to that aspect of my care. There was no overall [sic] humane treatment.” “They expect us to give them respect, but they don’t respect us. They treat us like we are animals just because we are incarcerated.”
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Prison infrastructure obstacles hinder women’s access to care
“I went through the right process and still couldn’t see a doctor.” “Seventy-five percent of the women are illiterate. They don’t know to put in a co-pay. They write ‘pain down there’ on their co-pay and are then misdiagnosed or just given medication.” “On a co-pay, in order to be seen, [you] should write that it’s a dire emergency, can’t get up, can’t walk. You have to go the extremes.” “I never got no paperwork in the mail saying what happened. I got no results at all.” “I had a couple that weren’t right [abnormal Pap test results]. No one said anything until a year later.”
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Prison infrastructure and culture hinder providers
“There does not exist the classic protective relationship between a doctor and their patient inside. . . . The doctors do not feel driven to take on any type of advocacy effort for a patient that they are unable to develop a doctor–patient relationship with. As a result, there is no one in the prison to support and take the side of the prisoner–patient.”a “[Providers] can get in trouble for being an advocate. . . . The system wants you to be mean to the inmates. . . . Employees can be written up for ‘fraternizing’ with the inmates.”a
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Self- and community advocacy
“We just try to take care of each other until we can’t no more or figure out a way to fix it ourselves.” “A lot of women are scared to speak up. I used to be scared, but I’m not anymore.” “I would also like to see more empowerment for the women inside. It would be nice to see prisoner self-advocacy that doesn’t equate to having conflict with one’s doctor or being confrontational, but by gaining power through negotiation.”a
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