Imagine you’ve just delivered your baby. You’re exhausted and overjoyed. Then, while cradling your newborn, you get horrifying news: You tested positive for drugs. But you know that’s wrong.
Across the U.S., hospitals often use tests that return false positives from poppy seed bagels, decongestants, Zantac and more. As a result, newborns are being taken from parents.
You likely know about drug screens for employment. For decades, legal safeguards have shielded workers from being fired over false positive results, including requiring confirmation tests and reviews. But parents often lack these protections. Even when a doctor refutes a positive result, hospitals may report the incorrect data anyway to child welfare agencies.
@marshallproj found that every year, U.S. hospitals report tens of thousands of babies for having been allegedly exposed to substances, without any guarantee that the tests were accurate. In 2022 alone, authorities removed more than 6,000 babies from their families.
The harms of drug testing fall disproportionately on low-income, Black, Hispanic and Native American women, who studies have found are more likely to be tested when they give birth, more likely to be investigated, and less likely to reunite with their children after they’ve been removed. But the false-positive cases we identified include parents of all socioeconomic classes and occupations.
“People should be concerned,” said Dr. Stephen Patrick, a leading neonatal researcher at
@emoryrollinssph . “This could happen to any one of us.”
🔗 Tap the link in our bio to read
@marshallproj ’s investigation, published in partnership with
@revealnews ,
@motherjonesmag and
@usatoday .
✍️: Shoshana Walter, additional reporting by Weihua Li, Andrew Rodriguez Calderón, Nakylah Carter and Catherine Odom / The Marshall Project
📷: Marissa Leshnov (
@marissaleshnovphoto ) and Andria Lo (
@aweilo ) for The Marshall Project
📱: Kristin Bausch / The Marshall Project
