Across the US, drug-testing of pregnant patients is routine, hospital error is common—and innocent mothers face punishment for mistakes their providers make.

Summary

U.S. hospitals are routinely drug-testing pregnant women and reporting positive results—often triggered by hospital-administered medications like morphine or benzodiazepines—to child welfare agencies.

Mistakes and misinterpretations of these tests have led to investigations, child removals, and trauma for innocent mothers.

A lack of safeguards, reliance on error-prone tests, and policies mandating automatic reporting exacerbate the problem.

Advocates and experts are calling for reform, including limiting unnecessary testing and ensuring results are reviewed before reporting, as these practices disproportionately harm mothers while failing to address actual child abuse risks.

  • leisesprecher@feddit.org
    23·
    13 days ago

    I’m completely out of the loop here, what’s the point of testing in the first place? Maybe I’m too European for that, but this seems extremely intrusive for no reason.

    • dustyData@lemmy.world
      21·
      13 days ago

      Well, you see, this is in the US. So women have rights and autonomy only on paper. In practice and according to a lot of people, women, specially when pregnant, are mere objects to be treated as cattle. The drug tests are part of the quality assurance. You wouldn’t want damaged goods.

      • P1nkman@lemmy.world
        2·
        8 days ago

        America is so fucked up. I guess they’ll soon be pushing drugs to kids, then have them tested and jail the entire household for illegal drug use. That should solve the slave employment crisis.

    • ramsorge@discuss.online
      15·
      13 days ago

      Hospitals test pregnant women for drug use so the government can take their child and put it into the “system” where predators can take advantage of them.

    • candybrie@lemmy.world
      82·
      13 days ago

      You don’t want drug addicts being solely responsible for a newborn baby do you? The only way to be sure that doesn’t happen is to test people.

      I don’t know if the original intention was just that naïve or if it was always sinister, but it’s definitely used in discriminatory ways and does more harm than good.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        5·
        13 days ago

        You don’t want drug addicts being solely responsible for a newborn baby do you?

        How about we do something like let the doctors determine if a mother is fit rather than some machine?

        • Scubus@sh.itjust.works
          2·
          12 days ago

          Dude is presumably catching downvotes, so I want to ensure that you guys realize he was stating the given reason, and pponting out that is is absurd