Poppy seed bagel results in having child taken away

This is getting ridiculous.

And in Pennsylvania again!

The ACLU and a Pennsylvania couple have filed a lawsuit against a local hospital as well as the Lawrence County Children and Youth Services (LCCYS) for taking their newborn baby away from them because the mother ate a Dunkin Donuts "Everything" bagel the day before giving birth.

Is this insane, or what?

From the Criminal Justice Change blog:

"The birth of a couple’s first child is supposed to be a joyous occasion -- and for the first three days, it was for Elizabeth Mort and her partner Alex Rodriguez. But then the commonwealth of Pennsylvania took their young daughter away after the hospital where she was born reported the mother for testing positive on a drug test. Her drug of choice? An “everything” bagel from Dunkin’ Donuts.

“The best thing in my life had been taken from me and there was nothing I could do to get her back,” Mort says. For five excruciating days, officials with Lawrence County Children and Youth Services (LCCYS) kept mother away from child, all based on a positive drug test they didn’t even bother to investigate -- and which the hospital never even informed the mother about. Now, aided by the ACLU of Pennsylvania, the parents are fighting back with a lawsuit against both LCCYS and Jameson Hospital."

Apparently, at Jameson Hospital mothers who are about to give birth are given a drug test to test for the presence of opiates in the mother's system. A positive result can result in LCCYS taking the baby away from the mother.

That's it! Just a positive drug test.

No investigation. Apparently no informing the parents of the drug test (both the fact that it happened and the results) before informing the authorities. Nothing.

Positive test? BOOM! Child gone.

The problem (one of the many) is that the threshold for a positive test in this case is 300 nanograms/mL, which a poppy seed bagel will easily trigger.

They tested the child and found the child drug-free, yet they took the child away anyway.

"But “misguided” is probably an understatement. As detailed in the ACLU’s lawsuit, the state “is removing newborns without any reasonable suspicion that they have been abused or are in imminent danger of abuse, in violation of parents' fundamental constitutional rights, and Jameson is aiding and abetting that constitutional violation by carrying out a drug-testing regime, the primary purpose of which is to further the goals of LCCYS, not provide medical care to patients.”"

There are so many things wrong with this that I can't even talk about them all.

How about the fact that they're being given a drug test without being told about it?

The fact that a positive test is all the LCCYS needs to remove a child, with no other investigation?

The trigger-level is so low that false positives are almost certain?

"At such low thresholds, there’s a good chance other parents will have to suffer -- and likely have already suffered -- the pain of having their child taken away from them based on nothing more than their choice of breakfast food."

Exactly! How many parents have gone through this nightmare? How many have lost their children and had to fight to get them back? And obviously not gone public with it?

I think a full-scale investigation of this is warranted, beginning with Jameson Hospital and then moving on up to the LCCYS. And other Pennsylvania counties need to look at their laws and make sure that something like this can't happen there as well.

This is an outrage.

One final note: Good for the ACLU for finally being on the right side of an issue.

(H/T: Mollie Hemingway)