Susan Horton was already a mother of four, and about to become a mother of five. The night that she went into early labor with her daughter, she had a final meal and probably a well-deserved rest before heading to a Kaiser Permanente hospital in Santa Rosa, California to deliver her child.
But because that meal Susan ate contained poppy seeds,
her baby was immediately taken away from her. That's right -- the hospital drug tested her without asking, which yielded a
false positive for opioids because of the poppy seeds. Susan Horton was
separated from her newborn baby for weeks and multiple court hearings before a judge dismissed the case.
Susan's story is, heartbreakingly, all too common. We must demand that Kaiser Permanente set a precedent and make this right.
Sign the petition for justice!There are numerous state and federal laws that necessitate hospitals to identify newborn babies that may have been exposed to drugs during pregnancy;
but the guidelines are vague and allow for bias to creep into the decision to test. If a mother has tattoos, bad teeth, or even a stressed demeanor, it could sway healthcare professionals to drug test her.
Studies have also shown that low-income women of color are disproportionately burdened with drug testing. On top of flimsy guidelines and few protections for patients, hospitals often use urine screenings to test for drug exposure which are famously inaccurate --
false positive rates can be as high as 50 percent!Stories like Susan Horton's are everywhere; everything bagels, lemon poppy seed muffins, medications like Zoloft, or even a common blood pressure medication prescribed to pregnant women can
trigger a false positive and prompt a baby to be ripped out of its mothers arms. Once a hospital has a positive test, even if its unconfirmed and suspicions of a false positive have gone unaddressed, it is often reported to authorities and lives can be ruined.
The hours, days, and weeks directly after birth are vital for the health of both mother and baby; it is also precious bonding time for the baby and its family.
For Kaiser Permanente to have allowed Susan Horton's baby to be whisked away during this time is abominable. The fact that it has declined to comment on the situation tells us everything we need to know about where the guilt here lies.
Every hospital has a duty to protect pregnant people and their babies, and Kaiser Permanente must be held accountable for its failure to do so.We are demanding that Kaiser Permanente CEO Greg A. Adams answers for this crime of family separation. He must initiate radical change, completely revising the hospital system's policies for identifying at-risk newborns so that false positives and inherent bias do not separate families unnecessarily!
Sign the petition if you agree!