Get the latest tech news

She Ate Poppy Seed Salad Just Before Giving Birth. Then They Took Her Baby Away

“They had a singular piece of evidence that I had taken something, and it was wrong.”

A spokesperson said the Santa Rosa hospital typically gets consent to drug-test patients for medical reasons, and as a mandated reporter under state law, it refers potential exposures of newborns to illicit drugs to child welfare authorities. Without confirmation testing and additional review, false positive results can lead hospitals to wrongly accuse parents of illicit drug use and report babies to child welfare agencies—which may separate newborns from their families, an investigation by The Marshall Project and Reveal has found. A spokesperson for St. Luke’s University Health Network declined to answer questions from The Marshall Project, saying in an email that the hospital “complies with all rules and regulations regarding drug testing and reporting” and that the newborn’s welfare “is always our primary concern.”

Get the Android app