Pregnancy, Birth Control, Child Placement, and Abortion in Federal Prison

By Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., and Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA

Program Statement	None in force. PS 6070.05 has been rescinded, and the Bureau has issued no successor under that number or in the 6070 series.
Subject	Birth control, pregnancy, child placement and abortion in federal custody
Current edition	Not applicable — there is no current Program Statement carrying this subject as its own title
Change notices	Not applicable
Supersedes	Not applicable
Governing regulation	28 C.F.R. part 551, subpart C — §§ 551.20 through 551.24. In force and binding today.
Governing statutes	18 U.S.C. § 4322 (restraints during pregnancy, labor and postpartum recovery); 18 U.S.C. § 4051(c) (segregated housing)
Where the Bureau’s current staff instruction sits	Program Statement 5200.09, Female Offender Manual (Feb. 19, 2025), § 7 — as amended by Change Notice CN-1 (July 31, 2025)
Related BP forms	None named in the regulation
Official PDF	No Program Statement PDF exists under 6070.05. Regulation: ecfr.gov · Female Offender Manual: bop.gov

Checked against the BOP policy set · 2026-09-07 · How we verify

The federal regulation governing pregnancy in prison — 28 C.F.R. part 551, subpart C — is in force and binds the Bureau of Prisons, but the standalone Program Statement that used to tell staff how to apply it, PS 6070.05, has been rescinded with nothing issued in its place. That gap is the reason this page exists: the rule still says what it says, while the instruction manual for following it has been folded into a different, much broader document. If you are looking for how women’s facilities work generally rather than what this specific rule requires, start at women’s federal prisons.

This page does three things. It reproduces the regulation in full, because that is what actually binds. It says plainly where the Bureau’s current staff instruction on the same subject now lives, so nobody wastes a month searching the 6070 series for a document that no longer exists. And it sets out the two federal statutes Congress enacted after the regulation was last amended — one in 2018, one in 2022 — which now do a great deal of the work the regulation never addressed.

The rule itself: pregnancy and child placement

Subpart C of part 551 is titled “Birth Control, Pregnancy, Child Placement, and Abortion.” It contains five sections. Here they are, verbatim, as they read in the Code of Federal Regulations today.

Section	Heading	Text of the regulation
§ 551.20	Purpose and scope.	“The Bureau of Prisons provides an inmate with medical and social services related to birth control, pregnancy, child placement, and abortion. The Warden shall ensure compliance with the applicable law regarding these matters.”
§ 551.21	Birth control.	“Medical staff shall provide an inmate with advice and consultation about methods for birth control and, where medically appropriate, prescribe and provide methods for birth control.”
§ 551.22	Pregnancy.	“(a) The Warden shall ensure that each pregnant inmate is provided medical, case management, and counseling services. (b) In order to ensure proper medical and social services, the inmate shall inform the institution medical staff as soon as she suspects she is pregnant. (c) Medical staff shall arrange for the childbirth to take place at a hospital outside the institution.”
§ 551.23	Abortion.	“(a) The inmate has the responsibility to decide either to have an abortion or to bear the child. (b) The Warden shall offer to provide each pregnant inmate with medical, religious, and social counseling to aid her in making the decision whether to carry the pregnancy to full term or to have an elective abortion. If an inmate chooses to have an abortion, she shall sign a statement to that effect. The inmate shall sign a written statement acknowledging that she has been provided the opportunity for the counseling and information called for in this policy. (c) Upon receipt of the inmate’s written statements required by paragraph (b) of this section, ordinarily submitted through the unit manager, the Clinical Director shall arrange for an abortion to take place.”
§ 551.24	Child placement.	“(a) The Warden may not permit the inmate’s new born child to return to the institution except in accordance with the Bureau of Prisons policy governing visiting. (b) Child placement is the inmate’s responsibility. The Warden shall provide opportunities for counseling by institution staff and community social agencies to aid the inmate with placement. (c) The institution staff shall work closely with community agencies and persons to ensure the child is appropriately placed. The staff shall give notice to the responsible community agency of the inmate’s plan for her child. Child welfare workers may come to the institution in appropriate cases to interview and counsel an inmate.”

Reproduced verbatim from 28 C.F.R. part 551, subpart C on ecfr.gov, section by section. Source notes: § 551.22 and § 551.24 carry [44 FR 38252, June 29, 1979, as amended … at 59 FR 62968, Dec. 6, 1994]; § 551.24 also records an amendment at [51 FR 47179, Dec. 30, 1986]; § 551.23 carries [51 FR 47178, Dec. 30, 1986, as amended at 59 FR 62968, Dec. 6, 1994].

That is the whole of it — about two hundred and forty words of binding text covering birth control, prenatal care, where a birth happens, the decision about a pregnancy, and what becomes of a newborn. Read it twice, because almost every dispute in this area comes down to what the regulation does not say.

What the regulation does not do

It sets no timeframes. Nothing in § 551.22 says how quickly a pregnancy test must be given, how soon prenatal care must begin, how often a pregnant person must be seen, or what “case management and counseling services” consist of.

It creates no program. The Mothers and Infants Together (MINT) program and the Residential Parenting Program are not in the regulation. They exist under Bureau policy, and eligibility for them is discretionary.

It says nothing about how long a mother and newborn may be together, nothing about breastfeeding or milk expression, nothing about who pays for the child’s medical care, and nothing about restraints, housing, work assignment or transport during pregnancy. Every one of those questions is answered — where it is answered at all — somewhere other than subpart C.

And § 551.24(b) allocates the hardest thing in the subpart in six words: “Child placement is the inmate’s responsibility.” The Warden’s duty under (b) is to provide opportunities for counseling, and under (c) staff are to work with community agencies and give notice of the plan. The plan itself is the mother’s to make.

Why this page carries no Program Statement number

Every other policy explainer on this site names a Program Statement in its heading. This one does not, and the reason is worth stating precisely rather than glossing over.

PS 6070.05 is rescinded. It is not listed in the Bureau’s current policy set, and no document in the 6070 series has been issued to replace it. We checked the Bureau’s published policy index across the 5000, 5200, 5300, 5400, 6000, 6070 and 7000 series on 7 September 2026 and found no successor; an independent check of the Bureau’s complete in-force Program Statement set on the same date returned no 6070-series statement of any kind. Its absence is corroborated, not an artifact of a search that missed something.

The regulation is not rescinded. Sections 551.20 through 551.24 remain in the Code of Federal Regulations, current as published, and were read section by section for this page. A regulation goes through notice-and-comment rulemaking to be created and has to go through it again to be removed. A Program Statement does not: the Bureau can withdraw one on its own authority, without a Federal Register notice and without a court saying a word.

So what binds? The regulation. This is the distinction that runs through this whole series, and here it is unusually stark. A Program Statement is the Bureau’s internal instruction to its staff about how to carry out a rule. The rule is 28 C.F.R. part 551, subpart C, and the Warden’s obligations under §§ 551.22, 551.23 and 551.24 did not lapse when the staff instruction implementing them was withdrawn. What was lost was not the obligation but the operational detail — the timeframes, the named responsible positions, the forms, the escalation paths. Those are exactly the things a person inside needs in order to know whether what is happening to them is what is supposed to happen.

Where the Bureau’s current staff instruction actually lives

The subject did not disappear from Bureau policy. It moved.

Program Statement 5200.09, the Female Offender Manual, dated February 19, 2025, contains a section 7 titled “BIRTH CONTROL, PREGNANCY, CHILD PLACEMENT, AND ABORTION” — the same title as subpart C — which reproduces §§ 551.20 through 551.24 and adds the Bureau’s implementing instructions beneath each one (PS 5200.09 at pp. 15–22). Sections 8 and 9 of the same manual set out the MINT program and the Residential Parenting Program (at pp. 22–24). That manual was amended by Change Notice CN-1, dated July 31, 2025.

This matters for a practical reason. If you file a request or an administrative remedy citing “the pregnancy Program Statement,” staff will not find one. The current staff instruction on your issue is in the Female Offender Manual, and it should be cited by that name and number. We do not reproduce it here — it is a substantial document with its own page. See the Female Offender Manual for the manual as a whole and parenting and family programs for MINT and the Residential Parenting Program.

One caution about reading that manual yourself. PS 5200.09 prints its regulation text and its staff instructions in two different typefaces, with a key at the top of each page. Change Notice CN-1 marks its additions with highlighting and its deletions with strikethrough. Neither typography survives when the PDF is converted to plain text — deleted words reappear as live text, and the line between rule and instruction disappears. Anyone quoting that document for a filing should read the PDF itself rather than an extracted copy, and should verify any regulatory language against ecfr.gov rather than against the manual’s rendering of it. At least one paragraph of the CN-1 text on abortion costs cannot be read reliably from an extracted copy for exactly this reason, and we have not reproduced it.

What can be said without ambiguity: CN-1 amended the Bureau’s implementing instructions, not the regulation. Section 551.23 stands today exactly as quoted above. The Change Notice states on its face that it implements changes to the Female Offender Manual “to remove references to any concept that may conflict with the January 24, 2025, Executive Order titled, Enforcing the Hyde Amendment” (PS 5200.09, CN-1 at p. 1). That is the Bureau’s own statement of why it changed its instructions. The regulation was not amended, and no rulemaking to amend it appears in the current Code of Federal Regulations.

The two statutes Congress added after the regulation

The regulation was last amended in 1994. Congress has twice legislated in this area since — and both statutes bind the Bureau directly, without needing a Program Statement to activate them.

Restraints: 18 U.S.C. § 4322 (First Step Act of 2018)

Section 301 of the First Step Act created a new statutory prohibition, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 4322 and added by Pub. L. 115-391, title III, § 301(a), Dec. 21, 2018, 132 Stat. 5217. Its general rule:

“(a) Prohibition.— Except as provided in subsection (b), beginning on the date on which pregnancy is confirmed by a healthcare professional, and ending at the conclusion of postpartum recovery, a prisoner in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons, or in the custody of the United States Marshals Service pursuant to section 4086, shall not be placed in restraints.”

The exceptions are narrow and enumerated. Restraints may be used only where a corrections official or marshal determines the person “is an immediate and credible flight risk that cannot reasonably be prevented by other means” or “poses an immediate and serious threat of harm to herself or others that cannot reasonably be prevented by other means,” or where a healthcare professional responsible for the person’s health and safety determines restraints are appropriate for her medical safety (§ 4322(b)(1)). Where an exception applies, “only the least restrictive restraints necessary” may be used (§ 4322(b)(2)).

Four things the exceptions may not be used to do, under § 4322(b)(3)(A): place restraints around the ankles, legs or waist; restrain the person’s hands behind her back; use four-point restraints; or attach the person to another prisoner. And under § 4322(b)(3)(B), on the request of the responsible healthcare professional, the official “shall refrain from using restraints on the prisoner or shall remove restraints used on the prisoner.”

Three more provisions are the ones families most often need:

• A written report within 30 days. If restraints are used under an exception, the official must submit to the Director of the Bureau of Prisons (or of the Marshals Service) and to the responsible healthcare professional a written report describing the facts and circumstances, the reasoning behind the determination, the type of restraints and how long they were used, and “any resulting physical effects on the prisoner observed by or known to” the official (§ 4322(c)(1)).
• Notice within 48 hours. “Not later than 48 hours after the confirmation of a prisoner’s pregnancy by a healthcare professional, that prisoner shall be notified … of the restrictions on the use of restraints under this section” (§ 4322(d)).
• A reporting process. The Director “shall establish a process through which a prisoner may report a violation of this section” (§ 4322(e)).

“Postpartum recovery” is defined by the statute as “the 12-week period, or longer as determined by the healthcare professional responsible for the health and safety of the prisoner, following delivery, and shall include the entire period that the prisoner is in the hospital or infirmary” (§ 4322(g)(1)). “Restraints” means “any physical or mechanical device used to control the movement of a prisoner’s body, limbs, or both” (§ 4322(g)(3)).

The Female Offender Manual reproduces § 4322 in full and directs that a person be notified “within 48-hours after confirmation of pregnancy” of the restraint restrictions “as well as how to report any perceived staff misuse of restraints” (PS 5200.09 at pp. 16–18).

Segregated housing: 18 U.S.C. § 4051(c) (2022)

The second statute is less well known and was not part of the First Step Act. 18 U.S.C. § 4051, “Treatment of primary caretaker parents and other individuals,” was added by Pub. L. 117-103, div. W, title X, § 1001(b), Mar. 15, 2022, 136 Stat. 912. Subsection (c) provides:

“(1) Placement in segregated housing units.— A covered institution may not place a prisoner who is pregnant or in post-partum recovery in a segregated housing unit unless the prisoner presents an immediate risk of harm to the prisoner or others. (2) Restrictions.— Any placement of a prisoner described in paragraph (1) in a segregated housing unit shall be limited and temporary.”

A “covered institution” is “a Federal penal or correctional institution,” and “post-partum recovery” under this section means “the first 12-week period of post-partum recovery after giving birth” (§ 4051(a)). The same section also defines a “vulnerable person” to include, among others, an individual who is pregnant (§ 4051(a)(7)(B)).

This is a statutory limit on housing that the 1994 regulation never contained. Where a pregnant or recently postpartum person has been placed in a Special Housing Unit, the operative question is not what Bureau policy allows but whether the statute’s condition — an immediate risk of harm — is met, and whether the placement is in fact limited and temporary. See special housing units.

What the pregnancy and child placement rules mean for you

If you are the person inside: your two duties under the regulation

Two duties fall on you under the regulation, and they are worth doing early and in writing. Section 551.22(b) says you “shall inform the institution medical staff as soon as she suspects she is pregnant” — a written staff request creates a dated record that a verbal report to an officer does not. And under § 551.24(b), child placement is your responsibility: you make the plan, and the Warden’s duty is to provide counseling opportunities to help you make it.

Ask for what the regulation entitles you to by name. Under § 551.22(a) that is “medical, case management, and counseling services” — three separate things, and the case-management and counseling components are the ones most often missing. Under § 551.21 it is “advice and consultation about methods for birth control.” Under § 551.24(b) and (c) it is counseling by institution staff and by community social agencies, and notice from staff to the responsible community agency of your plan for your child.

Know the two statutory protections without needing to find a Program Statement. You should be told within 48 hours of confirmed pregnancy about the restraint restrictions and how to report a violation. If restraints are used on you under an exception, a written report is supposed to go to the Director and to your healthcare provider within 30 days, and it is supposed to record any physical effects. And under § 4051(c) you should not be in a segregated housing unit unless you present an immediate risk of harm, and any such placement is to be limited and temporary.

If you are the family: get the dates written down

The single most useful thing you can do is get the dates written down. When was pregnancy confirmed, and by whom? Was the 48-hour restraint notice given? Was there prenatal care, and how often? Was a case manager or social worker assigned? Was a community agency given notice of the child-placement plan? Each of those either happened on a date or did not, and the regulation and the statutes generate paperwork for most of them.

Understand what § 551.22(c) does and does not promise. It requires that childbirth “take place at a hospital outside the institution.” It does not address how long mother and baby stay together afterward, and it does not entitle a newborn to return to the institution — § 551.24(a) forbids that except under the visiting policy. See inmate visitation.

If you are the person who will take the child, expect to be asked to take on the medical costs in writing. The Bureau’s implementing instruction is that the person or agency receiving custody is asked to be responsible for the child’s medical care costs beyond a short window, and to sign a statement of responsibility to that effect (PS 5200.09 at pp. 21–22). Read what you are signing, and read it before the birth rather than after. For the wider picture, see what families should know about federal prison.

If you are counsel: pregnancy and child placement

Cite the regulation and the statutes; do not cite a Program Statement that no longer exists. The authority is 28 C.F.R. §§ 551.20–551.24, 18 U.S.C. § 4322 and 18 U.S.C. § 4051(c). Where the Bureau’s own operating instruction is relevant, it is PS 5200.09, Female Offender Manual (2/19/2025), § 7, as amended by CN-1 (7/31/2025) — cite it by that title and note the amendment date, because the pre-CN-1 and post-CN-1 texts differ.

The rescission cuts both ways in an administrative remedy. It removes the Bureau’s own detailed standard, which is often the easiest thing to measure conduct against. But it also removes the Bureau’s usual answer that staff followed policy, because on the specific question of what the pregnancy instruction required, there is no longer a dedicated policy to have followed — only a regulation whose terms are short, mandatory in form (“shall”), and unaccompanied by the qualifiers a Program Statement usually supplies. A remedy that quotes § 551.22(a) and asks which of the three named services were provided and on what dates is harder to answer with a policy citation than it looks.

Two things to check before drafting. First, whether the Bureau has since issued a new Program Statement on this subject — the withdrawal of PS 6070.05 without a same-series successor is the current state as of the date on this page, and it is exactly the kind of thing that changes without announcement. Second, whether § 4322’s report and notice provisions were complied with, because those are documents that either exist or do not, and their absence is a concrete fact rather than a characterisation.

Finally: pregnancy, birth and caregiving circumstances can be relevant to relief that has nothing to do with prison conditions. Family-circumstances grounds for a sentence reduction are a separate analysis on a separate track; see caregiver and family circumstances in compassionate release. Nothing on this page suggests any particular person qualifies for anything.

What changed: the chronology behind this rule

The chronology is the story here, and no competitor page carries it.

Date	What happened
June 29, 1979	The regulation is published at 44 FR 38252, creating what are now §§ 551.22 and 551.24
Dec. 30, 1986	Amendments at 51 FR 47178 (§ 551.23) and 51 FR 47179 (§ 551.24)
Dec. 6, 1994	The last amendment to the subpart, at 59 FR 62968
Dec. 21, 2018	The First Step Act, § 301, enacts 18 U.S.C. § 4322 — Pub. L. 115-391, 132 Stat. 5217
Mar. 15, 2022	18 U.S.C. § 4051 is enacted — Pub. L. 117-103, div. W, tit. X, § 1001(b), 136 Stat. 912
Feb. 19, 2025	PS 5200.09, Female Offender Manual, is issued, containing a § 7 on this subject
July 31, 2025	Change Notice CN-1 amends PS 5200.09 § 7
As of Sept. 7, 2026	PS 6070.05 remains rescinded with no successor in the 6070 series; §§ 551.20–551.24 remain in force unamended since 1994

Two observations follow from that table. The regulation has not been touched in more than thirty years, which means it long predates both statutes now operating alongside it and does not reference either. And the Bureau’s own instruction on the subject was reissued twice in 2025 — so the current-policy answer to almost any operational question here is dated 2025, while the current-law answer is dated 1994, 2018 and 2022. Anyone quoting a source older than that on this subject is quoting something that has been overtaken.

Where people get stuck looking for a Program Statement that does not exist

Searching for a Program Statement that does not exist. People spend weeks looking for “BOP Program Statement 6070.05” or a replacement for it, and staff who are asked for it cannot produce one either. Route: stop citing 6070.05. In a staff request or an administrative remedy, cite 28 C.F.R. § 551.22 (or § 551.21 or § 551.24) by section number, and cite the Female Offender Manual by title where you need the Bureau’s operating instruction. The administrative remedy program runs informal resolution (BP-8), then BP-9 to the Warden, BP-10 to the Region, BP-11 to the Office of National Inmate Appeals.

Restraints used without notice, without a report, or beyond what the statute permits. The 48-hour notice under § 4322(d) is frequently the first thing that does not happen, and a person who was never told the restrictions exist is unlikely to report a violation of them. Route: § 4322(e) requires the Director to have established a reporting process, so ask in writing what that process is at your institution and use it; run a BP-8 and BP-9 in parallel, identifying the date, the type of restraint, and who applied it. If restraints were used, ask for the 30-day written report required by § 4322(c)(1) — its existence or absence is the whole issue.

Placement in a Special Housing Unit while pregnant or recently postpartum. Institutions sometimes treat SHU placement as a routine administrative decision. Section 4051(c) makes it conditional: it may not happen unless the person “presents an immediate risk of harm to the prisoner or others,” and any such placement “shall be limited and temporary.” Route: BP-8 and BP-9 quoting § 4051(c)(1) and (2) and asking for the specific finding of immediate risk of harm and the expected duration. Where the person is pregnant and the placement is continuing, this is not a matter to leave sitting in the remedy queue — it is worth counsel raising directly.

The child-placement plan and the medical-cost statement arriving too late. Section 551.24 puts the plan on the mother and the counseling on the Warden, and the Bureau’s instruction contemplates that the plan is made and the custodian identified before the birth. Families often first hear about the statement of responsibility for medical costs when the baby has already been delivered. Route: ask, early and in writing, for the counseling opportunities § 551.24(b) requires and for staff to give the notice to the responsible community agency that § 551.24(c) requires; ask the unit team and social worker for the statement-of-responsibility paperwork in advance so the person taking custody can read it before signing.

Applied Insight — Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, Managing Director: A rescinded Program Statement changes how a file gets built, not whether it can be built. When there is a Program Statement, we measure what happened against the Bureau’s own timelines and named responsibilities. When there is not, we go back to the regulation’s verbs — shall ensure, shall provide, shall arrange, shall give notice — and we ask, service by service and date by date, which of them happened. The statutes help here, because § 4322 and § 4051 create paper: a 48-hour notice, a 30-day report, a finding of immediate risk of harm. Those are things that exist or do not. The strongest filings in this area are almost always the plainest ones — a short chronology, the regulation quoted, and a list of the documents the law says should be in the file.

Related BOP policy on pregnancy and women’s health

• Women’s federal prisons — the paired page: which facilities house women, and what daily life there involves
• Female Offender Manual (Program Statement) — where the Bureau’s current staff instruction on this subject now lives, in § 7
• Parenting and family programs — MINT and the Residential Parenting Program, which are policy programs rather than regulatory entitlements
• Female Integrated Treatment (FIT) — the Bureau’s integrated treatment model at women’s institutions
• Patient Care (Program Statement) — the general framework for medical treatment, including prenatal care
• Medical and dental care in federal prison — how health services works day to day
• Special Housing Units — the housing status § 4051(c) restricts
• Use of force and restraints — the general restraint policy that § 4322 overrides during pregnancy and postpartum recovery
• Inmate visitation — the policy § 551.24(a) points to for a newborn returning to the institution
• Escorted trips and furloughs — the mechanisms for outside medical appointments and procedures
• Halfway houses and residential reentry centers — where the MINT program is housed
• Administrative Remedy Program — BP-8 through BP-11
• Caregiver and family circumstances — a separate route entirely, where a sentence reduction rather than a conditions remedy is what is being sought

Frequently Asked Questions About Pregnancy and Child Placement

Reviewed for legal accuracy by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney·September 2026