Women have revealed how they were given pain medications during childbirth and nearly had their children taken away after positive drug tests.
When Amairani Salinas of Texas was 32 weeks pregnant with her fourth child last year, doctors discovered that her baby had no heartbeat.
As doctors prepared her for an emergency c-section, they gave her a benzodiazepine, a sedative that helps patients stay calm.
Ms Salinas’ daughter was stillborn. As she cradled the infant’s body in her arms the next day, a social worker told her she was being reported to child welfare authorities because a drug test came back positive for benzodiazepines, the drug doctors gave her.
Victoria Villanueva of Indiana was induced with her first child in 2017. Doctors gave the then 18-year-old morphine, an opiate, for the pain.
Just a day later, a social worker told the new mom that her baby’s stool showed traces of opiates and that she would be reported to social services.
Mrs Villanueva said: ‘I didn’t even know how to function.’
These are just two of the women who have nearly had their children taken away as a result of positive drug tests, despite doctors prescribing and choosing the medications for them.
Women in Texas and Indiana revealed how they nearly had their newborns taken away due to positive drug tests from medications doctors gave them during birth (stock image)
Susan Horton, pictured above with one of her children, had to battle for two weeks to get her youngest back after a drug test falsely detected opioids
A 2022 study from Massachusetts General Hospital found that more than nine in 10 women who were given fentanyl in their epidurals tested positive for it.
According to the Marshall Project, which detailed the women’s stories, drug tests involving urine samples in plastic cups are also ‘highly susceptible to false positives, errors and misinterpretation – and many hospitals have failed to put in place safeguards that would protect patients from being reported over faulty test results.’
While medications like morphine and fentanyl have caused some of these patients to be flagged as opioid abusers, even common blood pressure drugs given during C-sections like Labetalol have caused false positives for meth because the active ingredients have similar structures to amphetamines.
Recent research suggests that incidents like these have been on the rise since Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022.
One study in JAMA Pediatrics, for example, found an 11 percent increase in children entering foster care if mothers lived in states with abortion restrictions like Texas and Indiana.
In 2022, the latest federal data available, more than 35,000 babies were reported to child welfare services due to substance exposure.
Elizabeth Dominguez (right) was temporarily separated from her newborn son Carter after she ate a poppy seed bagel that caused her to test positive to opiates. She is pictured after being reunited with her baby, alongside her husband and elder daughter
As she grieved her stillborn daughter, Ms Salinas had no idea the hospital had given her benzodiazepine and denied taking it.
She also tested positive for Delta-9, a type of legal cannabis she had gotten at a grocery store.
The incident forced her into a lengthy investigation, as well as severe depression, as she tried to take care of her other children.
She told the Marshall Project: ‘I still have three live children. They still need to eat. They still need to get up for school. They still need their mom.’
It took four months for officials to close the case against her as ‘unsubstantiated.’ It would be another year before she would read her medical records and discover why she tested positive.
Ms Salinas said: ‘Why are you giving your attention to this person who’s a good mom, who hasn’t done anything, instead of a child who may actually be in danger?’
Mrs Villanueva, who was newly married and working on her GED, told a nurse that while she briefly experimented with marijuana and acid when she was 15 years old, she hadn’t used any drugs since.
She received a drug test when she was first admitted to the hospital, which came back negative for any illicit substances. A nurse gave her morphine once contractions started.
But according to Mrs Villanueva’s medical records, the hospital told the Indiana Department of Child Services about her ‘history of drug use.’ Doctors also sent her newborn daughter’s stool for testing without her knowledge, which found morphine traces.
Even though her records explicitely state that the drugs were administered during labor, Mrs Villanueva still had to submit more tests and allow inspections of her home.
She told the Marshall Project that it took several weeks for investigators to close the case.
She said: ‘I couldn’t even really enjoy properly my child being born. Until after the fact, when they were gone.’
In unrealted but equally horrifying cases, some women have also reported having their children taken away simply after eating certain foods.
Ms Horton said: ‘I felt very emotional and I was alone. I just gave birth the day before, I’m not sleeping, and I just felt really ganged up upon’
In 2019, 29-year-old Elizabeth Dominguez was forcibly separated from her newborn son after a urine test came back positive for opiates.
It turned out that the poppy seed bagel she had eaten hours before going into labor had caused trace amounts of opiates to show up in her urine. Drug tests for the infant, Carter, came back negative.
Because poppy seeds come from the opium plant, they can become contaminated with opiates.
Ms Dominguez told local news station WKBW: ‘I felt like a terrible mother leaving him,’ she said. ‘I just want everyone to know that this could happen.’
‘It’s such a terrible thing and I don’t want it to happen to anyone.’
And in 2022, Susan Horton of California ate a pre-made poppy seed salad from Costco the day before giving birth to her daughter.
Just a day after delivering the newborn, doctors told her she couldn’t take the baby home because opiates were found in the mother-of-five’s urine.
It took two weeks to regain custody of her daughter, Hallie, which included appearing in juvenile court and having her home inspected.
She told Reveal News: ‘I felt very emotional and I was alone. I just gave birth the day before, I’m not sleeping, and I just felt really ganged up upon.
‘They had a singular piece of evidence that I had taken something and it was wrong.’