New Mothers: The Latest Victims of the War on Drugs
By law, the state is only permitted to take a child from its parents if there’s clear evidence of abuse or imminent danger -- and only as a last resort. But as a lawsuit filed last month by the ACLU of Pennsylvania reveals, one mother had her three-day-old daughter seized after a poppy seed bagel caused her to fail a hospital drug test.
And as the lead attorney in the case tells Change.org, she wasn’t the first mom to have her child abducted by the government based solely on a drug test -- and unless there's a change in policy and the drug war mentality that views mothers not as patients, but as potential criminals, she won't be the last.
Elizabeth Mort's case has drawn attention because of the clear, political spectrum-spanning outrageousness of what happened to her: Here was a mother who didn’t use any drugs while she was pregnant, never gave doctors any reason to believe her child’s life might be in jeopardy and was never even informed she failed a drug test. But, following a long-standing written policy, staff at Jameson Hospital dutifully reported her as a junkie to Lawrence County Children & Youth Services (CYS), which in turn, and without so much as a cursory investigation, promptly obtained a court order to take her baby away.
A day after she returned from the hospital, caseworkers -- accompanied by police -- took Mort’s child from her, holding the baby hostage for five days before her family was finally able to get her back. And all it took was one false positive.
But while Mort’s case has garnered the most publicity, Sara Rose, the lead ACLU attorney in the lawsuit against the hospital and CYS, says she wasn’t the first mom to lose her child in a similar manner. What's different is that Mort was willing to come forward and talk about what happened to her, whereas others -- not wanting to be labeled as bad, drug abusing parents and desiring only to put the past behind them -- have declined to pursue legal action.
“Two years ago, we represented another client who had a very similar situation at Jameson Hospital and with Lawrence County Children and Youth Services,” says Rose. In that case, the mother “was admitted to Jameson and drug tested without her knowledge, and the drug test was positive for marijuana.” The hospital then reported her to CYS, which told her that while her husband could take the child home, “she could not live in the same house and had to find another place to live or else the baby was going to be put in foster care.”
For the first two months of her newborn daughter’s life, the mother was only able to visit her child for one hour every other week until the ACLU was able to win her custody back in family court. But like countless others who have suffered the indignity of being called drug addicts and having their child taken away, the mother did not want to press ahead with a federal civil rights case.
By contrast, Elizabeth Mort’s entire family was eager to move forward with a lawsuit. “Elizabeth’s dad was the person who actually called us,” says Rose. “He called us after they had already gotten his granddaughter, Isabella, back into their custody. But he was concerned about how this could’ve happened to his family.”
How it happened is actually rather straightforward: Jameson Hospital, located about an hour north of Pittsburgh, has a policy of drug testing all pregnant women in its care. And as detailed in the ACLU lawsuit, it considers a drug test “positive” based on a threshold that is about one-sixth that used for federal employees -- meaning that just eating a poppy seed bagel is enough for a mother to fail, and enough for the hospital to report her to child protective services as a drug addict. And based on that one result alone, CYS will obtain a court order to seize a baby and put it in foster care, not even bothering to send out a caseworker to at least first interview the parents.
“Elizabeth’s case is a perfect illustration of just the incredible harm and unnecessary state intervention that results when you have this kind of policy,” says Rose. CYS “took the hospital’s word about the positive drug test and went with it, and decided that nothing else could possibly matter.”
But one positive drug test, even if accurate, does not demonstrate that a child once born will be in immediate risk of abuse, the court standard used to determine whether the state can interfere in a family relationship. Nor does the fact that a mother may once have smoked pot (or stopped at a Dunkin' Donuts) indicate that their child would be better off in the dysfunctional foster care system. And a mother who is actually on drugs and is aware of Jameson's practice of reporting mothers to child protective services based on one failed test? She's much less likely now to seek any prenatal care for her unborn baby, making the policy extremely counterproductive if the goal is to protect a child's life and not simply to sell some drug tests and provide an excuse for the local child services bureaucracy to demand more funding.
If there are clear signs of abuse or firm evidence a child may be in danger, that's another conversation. But the only way that can be determined is if caseworkers actually investigate before they head off to a judge and decide to tear a family apart. Considering the number of documented failures and the terrible emotional cost a mistake can impose on a family, it's really the least they can do.
Photo Credit: Katie Tegtmeyer
Charles Davis
has covered Congress and criminal justice issues for public radio and Inter Press Service.
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