I want to tell you a little about motherhood and prisons, by sharing some memories. Without context for you mob who haven’t been inside, your “thoughts and prayers” will just be Scott Morrison deep.

In Adelaide if you have a baby while in prison you can’t keep your baby with you. I remember standing outside our units for “count” and watching my friend walk down the hill back to the compound.

Her head was low, tears were streaming down her face, her shoulders slumped, her arms were empty and her breasts were leaking milk through her prison issue t shirt. She’d just had her first baby, in a room with prison guards...and she returned empty handed.

The father of her baby wasn’t allowed at the birth for a range of inane reasons. That memory sits with me as a symbol of the actual barbarity and cruelty of the system.

Then while I was in line for my meds another heavily pregnant girl presented, moaning and crying and cradling her swollen stomach. The nurses told her she was in labour and she wailed

“no I can’t be, I don’t get out for another month, they’ll take my baby”. Spoiler alert, she had her baby, they took her baby, and she’s still fighting to get her back.

I want to share the memory of standing in line for that sweet 10 minute phone call with your babies on mother’s day knowing it would be your only contact with them that day, because prison mail had been held up and you didn’t get their card or letter.

I want to share the memory of a woman who came home on home detention and had her baby too early for his little heart to survive, and she lost him. Corrections wouldn’t let her stay overnight in the hospital with him, because “there was no point”.

They sent her home with empty arms and filled her heart with so many stones she could barely carry it anymore.

So today, my heart rests with all of my sistas inside. It rests with the mothers who have children, of all ages, locked in cages. My heart rests with the mums who won’t see their kids today, because visits are suspended.

My heart rests with the mums who have lost their kids to this system, & fight every single day on release to get them out. My heart sits with the women inside who won’t get to hold their own mums today & it rests with the kids on the outside who just want a hug from mum today.

So, please let these stories- some of which i know intimately well- spur your anger towards this brutal & unforgiving system, let it fuel you to stand beside us & abolish it brick by brick-if not for those mamas inside, but for every child & baby outside of it.