Susan Horton had been a stay-at-home mom for almost 20 years, and now—pregnant with her fifth child—she felt a hard-won confidence in herself as a mother.
Then she ate a salad from Costco.
Horton didn’t realize that she would be drug-tested before her child’s birth. Or that the poppy seeds in her salad could trigger a positive result on a urine drug screen, the quick test that hospitals often use to check pregnant patients for illicit drugs. Many common foods and medications—from antacids to blood pressure and cold medicines—can prompt erroneous results.
If Horton had been tested under different circumstances—for example, if she was a government employee and required to be tested as part of her job—she would have been entitled to a more advanced test and to a review from a specially trained doctor to confirm the initial result.
Anyone at every step of the way.
“Whoops we didn’t collect enough urine to perform the test.”
“Whoops I spilled it and she’s already in labor”
“Test came back as positive? No that was a false alert”
“Whoops I filled the wrong information in the report and sent the authorities to the wrong place”
“I came to check on her and she clearly wasn’t on drugs so I left”
Etc. These are moral failings of everyone along the way.
That could land them in prison, or at the least they would lose their license in addition to fines.
You’re asking medical personnel to bypass requirements, and in this situation I totally understand how that seems like a win-win, but that’s not a practice we should be encouraging people to do. That’s how people die.
“I was just following the rules”?
On the one hand, you’re correct.
On the other, you need to think and be brave and be willing to take a little risk sometimes to protect others. Otherwise we end up with something like the quote above and…
The choice is between separating a mother from a new born child and not separating her. The mother is now childless, and the child will probably end up in our horrific adoption system. Maybe they will find a loving parent, or maybe they’ll end up loveless. The choice should be easy to make.
I’m not saying lie on all tests. Just on ones where the moral boundaries are incredibly clear.
