A recent partnership with The Marshall Project, Reveal News, Mother Jones, and USA Today shed light on the horrific realities faced by many American mothers in recent years: receiving drugs from hospital workers during labor only to be reported to child welfare after testing positive for those same drugs.

Unfortunately, many new and even grieving mothers were subjected to child welfare investigations because of the medication they received while in the hospital. Some were even unaware they received the meds in the first place, yet were reported for illicit drug use because of them.

One woman named Victoria Villanueva was pregnant with her first child when officials detected morphine in her baby’s system. Doctors had administered narcotics to ease the pain of her contractions. When it was discovered in her baby’s meconium, Villanueva feared her baby would be taken from her.

“I didn’t even know how to function,” she told The Marshall Project.

Another mom named Amairani Salinas needed an emergency cesarean section after doctors realized her baby no longer had a heartbeat, The Marshall Project reported. When preparing for the procedure, they gave her midazolam, a benzodiazepine, to calm her down. 

However, as she began her grieving process—her stillborn daughter in her arms—a social worker entered her hospital room to tell her she was being reported to child welfare authorities because of the traces of benzodiazepine in her system. Yes, the same meds that the hospital staff had administered—which Salinas had no recollection of receiving in the first place.

As if it wasn’t enduring the devastating loss of her baby wasn’t enough, she now had to grapple with this disturbing and downright enraging news.

The overturn of Roe v. Wade has triggered child welfare investigations and surveillance of pregnant women, and mothers like Villanueva and Salinas are being reported for drug use while under the care of hospital staff who administer said drugs.

Not to mention, many of our hospital employees and social workers are also unequipped and overburdened when it comes to properly testing and reporting drug use.

Moreover, drug tests are often faulty and can’t actually tell whether the positive results were a result of hospital-administered medications or the mothers’ substance use. Some can’t even determine when the person stopped using the drug, e.g. after they realized they were pregnant, The Marshall Project reported.

So, who shoulders the blame? Mothers, of course.

“How much harm to birthing people are we willing to allow? Our patients are being harmed until we can get our act together,” Dr. Davida Schiff of Mass General Brigham, an integrated healthcare system in New England, told The Marshall Project. “The hospitals are at fault. The clinicians are at fault. Our policies are at fault.”