A Detroit mother says she was forced to give birth in prison after not being allowed to go to hospital.
Jessica Preston was locked up for a driving offence while she was eight months pregnant, and went into labour only to be ignored by jail medical staff, she told Detroit's Local 4.
Ms Preston was pulled over for driving with a suspended license, and was ordered to pay $10,000 but did not have the money. She was in Macomb County Jail until her trial date, but went into labour a month early.
Jail staff would not let her go to the hospital, and so she gave birth on the floor of her dirty jail cell, according to local network Detroit Local 4.
"They didn't believe her," her mother-in-law Linda Preston told the network. "They just left her to lay there. They didn't care. They just kept saying she wasn't having the baby, and I don't know how anybody could say that when she was bleeding."
Ms Preston gave birth to her first child via emergency C-section, and expected the same with her second child but had to give birth vaginally in her cell.
The network reports that the mother and baby are now doing well a few months on.
Newshub.
