Female prisoners' babies shouldn't be sentenced to life without breast milk

Last July, as my parents and I sat munching Bugles around a visiting room table with my incarcerated sister in an Illinois state prison, a cry rang out from the table next to us. There, a bawling infant lay cradled in the arms of a visitor. She smoothed the baby's soft hair, then surreptitiously opened her shirt to nurse it. The baby simmered down immediately, happily sucking away. Our conversation went silent, and my sister averted her eyes. She was 34 weeks pregnant herself. "Well," she said, patting her gigantic moon of a belly, "that's not gonna be us." Like almost all jails and prisons, her current locale didn't accommodate either breast pumps or nursing during visits. Instead, my...