Hospitals across the country reported mothers to authorities after they tested positive for medications used routinely in millions of births.

Amairani Salinas was 32 weeks pregnant with her fourth child in 2023 when doctors at a Texas hospital discovered that her baby no longer had a heartbeat. As they prepped her for an emergency cesarean section, they gave her midazolam, a benzodiazepine commonly prescribed to keep patients calm. A day later, the grieving mother was cradling her stillborn daughter when a social worker stopped by her room to deliver another devastating blow: Salinas was being reported to child welfare authorities

What happened to Salinas and Villanueva are far from isolated incidents. 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.

  • madthumbs@lemmy.worldEnglish
    536·
    15 days ago

    Consider journalists have to sensationalize their reports. -It’s their bread and butter.

    Medical professionals are mandated reporters. Their job and well being is on the line if they do not report. Blaming them and not the investigating bodies (if they’re even guilty) is ignorant and irresponsible.

    I don’t think many mothers want responsibilities for infants when on and coming off the drugs either. Not knowing better while on them might have triggered some protective measures.

    It’s good to consider situations before jumping the gun and getting people killed.

    • pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.onlineEnglish
      36·
      15 days ago

      One of the considerations should be, “I just gave this person a drug and they tested positive afterwards.”

      Unless there’s other evidence of active drug use, the only assumption should be that it’s positive because of the drugs you gave them.

        • XTL@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          1·
          15 days ago

          I only read the comments, but my impression is that the drugs were given before c section and it was the newborn that was tested and not the mother.

      • dion_starfire@lemm.eeEnglish
        7·
        15 days ago

        It’s possible the form listed the drugs she was on, but the social worker didn’t know it was their job to figure out which results to ignore.

        I’ve literally seen a Texas judge - who not only presumably court ordered drug tests regularly, but was also an ex-nurse - not understand how drug tests work. She assumed the lab would eliminate prescription-caused positives from the results. It took subpoenaing the tech who administered the test - a person in the same courthouse - to take the stand and tell the judge “we just list what the test found and what meds the person said they were taking, it’s someone else’s job to cross reference the two” before the judge stopped assuming the person on prescription Adderall was a meth head.

        If an ex-nurse who deals with drug tests on a nearly daily basis doesn’t understand how they work, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it turned out that a social worker misinterpreted the results similarly.