Can U Get Ur Baby Taken Away for Peeing Positive for Marajua in Nys
The morning Crystal H.'s water broke, the medical staff at the Garnet Health Medical Heart in Middletown, N.Y., collected a urine sample from her, just every bit they had during other prenatal appointments, according to a lawsuit filed on her behalf last calendar week. In previous visits, doctors had taken these samples to brand sure at that place was no claret in her urine and to check her protein levels. Crystal, whose terminal name is redacted in the public filing to protect her privacy, assumed this sample was no unlike.
But the sample taken on Dec. 18, 2020, was used to screen for drugs — without Crystal'due south knowledge and consent, courtroom filings said. The examination came back "presumptive positive" for opiates, but non because Crystal had really consumed whatever drugs.
She said she had eaten a bagel with poppy seeds, which sometime contain traces of morphine that can trigger a positive issue in a drug test.
On Friday, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) and National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) filed human rights complaints on behalf of Crystal and another woman, identified as Jane Doe in the complaint, against the Garnet Health Medical Center. The complaints allege that the hospital drug-tested the women without their cognition and consent and, afterward imitation positives considering of poppy seeds, alerted child welfare services.
Both women merits infirmary employees denied them appropriate medical care and bonding time with their children after the false positives, including denying them the take chances to breastfeed their children.
"By drug testing me without my consent and reporting a imitation presumptive positive result to child welfare regime, Garnet Health turned what should accept been the almost meaningful moment of my life into the most traumatic i," Jane Doe said in a news release from the NYCLU. "All because I ate a salad with poppy seed dressing."
Rob Lee, a spokesman for Garnet Health, said the hospital was unable to comment on the lawsuit.
The allegations are an "extreme example" of what tin can happen when drug tests get awry, said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU. Just the cases highlight larger problems with nonconsensual drug screening for pregnant people, which disproportionately touch pregnant people of color and low-income women, advocates say.
Gabriella Larios, an Equal Justice Works boyfriend at the NYCLU, said infirmary policies effectually drug screenings for pregnant people are opaque: In many cases, it is not articulate whether the infirmary screens every pregnant patient for drugs or screenings are done at the discretion of the medical staff. (Garnet did not answer detailed questions well-nigh its screening policies.)
"Private hospitals are left to develop their own guidelines," Larios said. These are guidelines that many patients may be unaware of and that may not exist applied uniformly, she added.
Allegations of drug utilize among pregnant people began taking off during the "crack epidemic" in the 1980s and '90s, when some politicians and news media helped to fuel fear that the predominantly Black children of cocaine-addicted mothers would develop into criminals.
To this mean solar day, Black and Hispanic parents are unduly surveilled for drug employ, Lieberman said, including by medical providers. "It's medical racism," she said.
Knowing the precise effects of cocaine, marijuana and opiates on pregnant people and infants is challenging, some doctors say.
In an commodity for Oregon-based Samaritan Wellness Services from 2020, Lindsey Felix, a neuropsychologist who works for the care network, said recent literature suggests that cocaine, marijuana and opiates have long-term negative consequences. But because it is difficult to assemble reliable data virtually illicit drug use during pregnancy, the furnishings of those drugs are difficult to study.
"Children who are exposed to one substance are often exposed to multiple substances," Felix said. And people who use these substances also have other risk factors, including low socioeconomic status and poor prenatal care.
Some studies have found marijuana use can affect the developing fetus's brain and is linked to lower birth weight, and others have found that opium utilize can also atomic number 82 to agin outcomes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends against using marijuana during pregnancy, because it "may increase your baby's risk of developmental problems."
Testing for these substances in pregnant people is "controversial," the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology notes, and the group recommends that urine drug screening be performed only with the patient'south consent.
The ACOG guidance recommends that "a positive test not be a deterrent to intendance, a disqualifier for coverage nether publicly-funded programs, or the sole gene in determining family unit separation."
Policies that deny meaning people care and access to their newborn because of positive drug tests also contradict electric current medical guidance, said Emma Roth, a staff attorney at the NAPW who is representing Doe in the contempo lawsuit.
According to Doe's lawsuit, she was told by a nurse that she could not breastfeed her kid, considering of her presumptive positive drug examination. A pediatrician later intervened, the filing said, advising that even if Doe had consumed drugs and her infant displayed symptoms of withdrawal — which was non the example — breastfeeding would "help to lessen the furnishings."
Roth pointed to enquiry that has shown that "rooming in," the practice of caring for the parent and newborn together in the same room immediately from nascence, is "both rubber and beneficial for substance-exposed babies."
Arguments for separation "are really grounded in stigma and ignore a lot of the scientific discipline around prenatal drug exposure," Roth said. "A drug test is only not a parenting test."
In her complaint, Crystal, who identifies as Latinx, said a generally White nursing staff have her "accusatory and dismissive treatment" after her presumptive positive result, "ignoring her repeated requests to brand the experience of laboring more than comfortable."
She said that she also was denied the risk to breastfeed and that a nurse did non support the first-time female parent as she tried to get her baby to latch to her chest. Two days later on giving birth, she was given an electric pump and a lactation consultant, but by that fourth dimension her babe could not latch, the complaint said. Crystal was never able to breastfeed her kid, the complaint said.
There take been similar lawsuits in other states: Ane Maryland mother faced what she called a "traumatizing" investigation in 2018 when a hospital reported a false positive after she ate poppy seeds. In Pennsylvania, 2 lawsuits were settled against Lawrence County after officials removed newborn children from their mothers' care because of failed drug tests. Both women said they ingested poppy seeds shortly before existence screened.
Responding to criticism that drug testing policies for pregnant people are racially biased and medically unnecessary, New York Metropolis announced concluding year that its public hospitals would stop the practice of drug-testing meaning patients without explicit written consent.
The proclamation came as the urban center's Commission on Human Rights opened an investigation of three private hospitals to make up one's mind whether race was a factor in who was tested and reported to child welfare government, the Gothamist reported.
Black and Latino children in New York Urban center made upwardly 87 percentage of reports of child neglect or abuse, even though they stand for merely 23 percent and 36 pct of the child population, the outlet wrote. It likewise reported that in 2019, 760 newborns with positive toxicology tests were reported to child welfare authorities. Afterward an initial investigation, the urban center found 486 of those cases to be credible.
But without a statewide law barring nonconsensual drug screening, the practice tin continue in hospitals such as the Garnet Health Medical Eye, 70 miles north of the city, Larios said.
Lieberman said it was "hypocritical" to go along to enforce secretive drug screening policies while substances such equally marijuana are being increasingly decriminalized throughout the state.
Even as drugs are decriminalized, Lieberman said, pregnant people remain "one of the well-nigh stigmatized groups in the country" when it comes to drug apply. This hampers their ability to get the medical back up they demand, she said.
Roth added that while NAPW is "incredibly supportive of the efforts to provide resource and access to care to individuals who use drugs," the "risk of beingness penalized" is too high. "Our effect here is with this punitive response," she said.
These policies could besides weaken women's trust in the medical system, causing them to turn away from necessary medical interventions exterior of pregnancy, women'south advocates said.
Roth said her customer was so traumatized by the experience at Garnet that she refused to seek therapy. "She lost all faith in medical providers to respect her privacy, to keep her records confidential and to be there every bit a source of support for her and her infant."
Anne Branigin
Can U Get Ur Baby Taken Away for Peeing Positive for Marajua in Nys
Source: https://www.thelily.com/a-hospital-reported-two-new-moms-for-testing-positive-for-drugs-they-had-eaten-poppy-seeds-a-lawsuit-says/
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