Drug Testing Pregnant Women
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Tell me this isn't true
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/12/11/pregnant-hospital-drug-test-medicine
Across the country, hospitals are dispensing medications to patients in labor, only to report them to child welfare authorities when they or their newborns test positive for those very same substances on subsequent drug tests, an investigation by The Marshall Project and Reveal has found.
The positive tests are triggered by medications routinely prescribed to millions of birthing patients in the U.S. every year. The drugs include morphine or fentanyl for epidurals or other pain relief, anxiety medications, and two different blood pressure meds prescribed for C-sections.
In a time of increasing surveillance and criminalization of pregnant women since the end of Roe v. Wade, the hospital reports have prompted calls to the police, child welfare investigations and even the removal of children from their parents.
The reporting for this story included interviews with two dozen patients and medical professionals, and a review of hundreds of pages of medical and court records. Some spoke about cases on condition of anonymity because the custody of children is at stake.
In New York, a mother with no history of drug use lost custody of her toddler and newborn for five months after she tested positive for fentanyl that the hospital had given her in her epidural. In Oklahoma, when a mother tested positive for meth, sheriff’s deputies removed her newborn and three other children. They were held in foster care for 11 days, until a confirmation test proved that the culprit was a heartburn medication the hospital had given the patient.
