[CW: Addiction, family separation] They followed doctors' orders. The state took their babies.

done

excuse me, what?

if you think this is just a red state thing you're deluding yourself.

No agency tracks how many new mothers have been investigated for taking legally prescribed medications, but after sending 100 public records requests to every state and the District of Columbia, I found thousands like Dass who have been referred to child welfare authorities, their lives suddenly under scrutiny, their newborns sometimes placed into foster care for weeks, months or indefinitely.

fuck america, my dude

EDIT: okay this sounds way more aggro than I intended it to, my bad. I don't doubt its happening in most or all states though.

furthermore this is disgusting. Suboxone is lifesaving medication.

Why does every medical provider, CPS employee and judge in the US have to act like a petty tyrant who can be blatantly biased in their supposed application of the law?

In the eight states and Washington, D.C., that provided information, we found that almost 3,700 women with only MAT in their systems were reported – no other substances were noted. Providers in Kentucky, a center of the epidemic, turned in nearly 700 women on prenatal MAT from 2017 through 2020. In Arizona, which doesn’t track buprenorphine cases, hospitals reported about 400 new mothers who only had methadone in their systems.

We also found women who were reported after taking antidepressants, anxiety and ADHD medications, and even over-the-counter cold medicine during pregnancies. Some women were reported after testing positive for the fentanyl in their epidurals.

States are even less forthcoming about how many MAT-exposed newborns are placed into foster care, though we identified at least 40 across the country, including 16 who were never returned to their families. In Arizona, which keeps better data than most states, 16 babies exposed only to methadone were removed from their parents in 2021 and 2022. In one 2019 case, a West Virginia judge allowed the state to cut off payment for a mother’s Suboxone, prompting her to relapse, and then terminated her parental rights. “I always have a problem with people being on Suboxone to begin with, and that’s my position,” the judge said during one hearing.

Dass tried to paint a picture of herself and Bieniasz as responsible parents. Living at the campground while saving up for an RV was a conscious choice, she said – a short-term sacrifice that would give their daughter longer-term stability. Dass insisted that the baby was healthy and that she hadn’t witnessed any withdrawal symptoms. “People should not be shamed for being on Suboxone,” Dass argued, according to the DCS notes from the meeting.

But Pugliese, the DCS investigator, seemed unconvinced. If the parents were trying to save money, Dass remembers her asking, then why did she have a full set of manicured nails? (“They were press-ons from the dollar store,” Dass told me.) In her report to the court a few days later, Pugliese said the couple was suspected of using “illicit substances,” even though more tests, including one examining the baby’s meconium, or first bowel movement, confirmed the absence of any substances other than buprenorphine. Pugliese also indicated that Dass had no “protective capacities” and had failed to “set aside her own needs for her child.” The baby would be at serious risk of injury or death if she remained with her parents, she reiterated.

^^ I hope this person lost that job over this article. Frankly I hope for worse actually. Sniveling judgemental cop-ass piece of shit. I'm sure that had nothing to do with it either