Child Protective Services Abducts Child

Let me summarize this case: Back in 2010, a woman gave birth in a Pittsburgh hospital. Whether she gave consent for her blood to be tested for drugs, I don't know. What it clear after the lawsuit is that she was NOT a opiate drug user, which means she could NOT fail a test for opiates. Regardless of what could and could not happen, Child Protective Services showed up at the door of her home, 3 days after she gave birth and took her child hostage. Five days later the child was returned.

The media that reported this, failed as usual, to ask the serious questions about how it happened.

1. Are all women getting non-consensual drug tests when they go to give birth? Everyone realizes that blood tests are part of child birth, but drug tests are not.
2. How is it possible for a woman who is innocent of opiate drug use be compelled to hand over her newborn child, based on accusations of opiate use? The implication here is that being innocent is NOT a defense.
3. Where was this women's real due process? 
4. What would have happened if this woman if she had defended her child by resisting the abduction? Someday this is going to happen to a woman who doesn't understand what's happening, someone who is going to become hysterical and when that happens, somebody is going to get hurt or killed.

So what's the big deal?

This woman lost something that is hard to measure and something that cannot be returned. The biological events that take place between a mother and child during the first days after birth are extremely important. Neuro-behavioral patterns that are not well understood are rooted in these first days and the consequences of this sort of disruption are impossible to predict.

Yes, CPS had to pay the woman over $100,000; however, in my mind they got of cheap. The penalty should have been extreme, at least as extreme as abducting a newborn child from its mother.

http://news.yahoo.com/pa-mom-settles-suit-over-poppy-seed-drug-165925243.html

Thomas Secrest