Two inmates at an all-women’s New Jersey jail are pregnant, and officials say both were impregnated through consensual sex with at least one transgender fellow inmate.

The female inmates are housed at the troubled Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in Clinton, which the New Jersey Governor recently announced plans to shut down.

There are 27 transgender prisoners and more than 800 cisgender women at the facility, and right now, it is uncertain if the pregnant women had sex with the same transgender prisoner.

Last year, the correctional facility began to house inmates by gender identity after settling a lawsuit brought by a trans woman and the American Civil Liberties Union. Edna Mahan is the only women’s prison in New Jersey, and it does not require transgender inmates to proceed with reassignment surgery in order to be housed.

Edna Mahan has been plagued with reports of widespread abuses, which led to its upcoming closure. In January 2020, 10 prison guards faced criminal charges stemming from an alleged assault of inmates, including a transgender woman, Daily Mail reported.

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In 2021, New Jersey enacted a policy to allow prisoners to be housed in accordance with their preferred gender identity. The policy was part of a settlement from a civil rights suit brought by a woman forced to live in men’s prisons for 18 months, The New York Post reported. That same year, two Edna Mahan prisoners filed a lawsuit to revoke the gender identity policy after they were allegedly harassed by transgender prisoners.

The women also claimed the transgender inmates were engaging in sexual activity with cisgender prisoners.  

Photo: Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Clinton, N.J., June 8, 2021 (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File) / Pregnant woman image credit: globalmoments/ iStock, https://www.istockphoto.com/portfolio/globalmoments?mediatype=photography