The Largest Massachusetts Hospital System Stops Reporting Babies Born Addicted to Drugs Due to a “Woke” Reason That Will Make Your Blood Boil
You know how hospitals are required to report when a baby is born addicted to drugs because mama used drugs during pregnancy? Well, the largest hospital system in Massachusetts is putting an end to that practice and you’ll never guess why.
The Mass General Brigham Hospital system is making a major change and it will impact their youngest patients.
The hospital will no longer report suspected abuse or neglect to the state solely if a newborn baby tests positive for drugs after birth.
Instead, hospitals will now require written consent before conducting a drug test on the expectant mother or infant, in most cases.
Mass General Brigham said the move is to address the “racial and ethnic inequities” present in healthcare, adding that substance abuse disorder in the context of pregnancy more “disproportionately affects Black individuals.”
They say reporting babies born addicted to drugs is racist because it’s disproportionately black children who are impacted by the rule.
But here’s the kicker. The new policy says that reports “after delivery should be filed only if there is reasonable cause to believe that the infant is suffering or at imminent risk of suffering physical or emotional injury.” Evidence of injury or of imminent risk of injury is a very high bar; setting it so high will invite considerable trouble. What does “imminent risk” mean in this context? Does it mean that you can only report a mother who is high when she leaves the hospital and forgets to put the baby in a car seat, and who is so out of sorts that she won’t remember how or when to feed the baby?
No one who changes policies like this cares about the kids.
Black kids can die and that’s okay with them as long as we pretend the problem doesn’t exist.
Drug overdoses are one of the main causes of preventable death among pregnant and postpartum women in the United States. Overdose deaths among this population increased 81% between 2017 and 2020 — resulting in the deaths of more than 1,200 pregnant and postpartum women in 2020.
At the federal level, the Biden-Harris administration acknowledged that “having substance use disorder in pregnancy is not, by itself, child abuse or neglect” in a report published in 2022.
And a federal bill called the SAFE in Recovery Act, put forth by Sen. Edward J. Markey and others in October, seeks to require consent for toxicology screening of the mother — it’s not a common practice currently — and block states from requiring notification of child welfare officials if the mother is taking a drug in “accordance with the recommendations of the prescribing practitioner” and the health care provider has no other reason to suspect that the child is in imminent danger.
“We can’t accept a reality where parents are being separated from their children, stigmatized or threatened because they are getting the health care they needed, recommended by a doctor and proven to be safe,” Markey said in a news release. “Substance use disorder treatment makes parents and children safer, not less so.”
Natalie D. is an American conservative writer who writes for Supreme Insider and Conservative US, ! Natalie has described herself as a polemicist who likes to “stir up the pot,” and does not “pretend to be impartial or balanced, as broadcasters do,” drawing criticism from the left, and sometimes from the right. As a passionate journalist, she works relentlessly to uncover the corruption happening in Washington. She is a “constitutional conservative”.
