They Followed Doctors’ Orders. The State Took Their Babies.

Reveal

The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

News

4.7 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2024

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jade Dass was taking medication to treat her addiction to opioids before she became pregnant. Scientific studies and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that taking addiction-treatment medications during pregnancy leads to the best outcomes for both mothers and babies. But after Dass delivered a healthy daughter, the hospital reported her to the Arizona Department of Child Safety.

Even as medications like Suboxone help pregnant women safely treat addiction, taking them can trigger investigations by child welfare agencies that separate mothers from their newborns. Why are women like Dass being investigated for using addiction-treatment medications during pregnancy?

To understand the scope of the dragnet, reporter Shoshana Walter, data reporter Melissa Lewis and a team of Reveal researchers and lawyers filed 100 public records requests, putting together the first-ever tally of how often women are reported to child welfare agencies for taking prescription drugs during pregnancy.

This week on Reveal, in an episode we first aired in July 2023, we follow Dass as she grapples with losing custody of her baby—and makes one last desperate attempt to keep her family together.

For more about Dass and other mothers facing investigation for taking medication-assisted treatment, read Walter’s investigation in collaboration with The New York Times Magazine.

This is an update of an episode that originally aired in July 2023.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. I'm Al Etzin.
0:07.0	In the late summer of 2021, a young family is camping in Wyoming. They're staying at a campsite that looks out at a pristine mountain lake. They even see Antelope.
0:19.0	We saw a few of those. And how's cool I didn't think there was Antelope in the United States, but there is apparently.
0:27.0	Jade Dawes, her boyfriend Ryan Banes, and their baby girl are spending their days listening to music in the tent, fishing, and eating peaches from a farmstank.
0:38.0	It's just fun relaxing and at night we look at the stars and I'm kind of just cherish each other's company.
0:45.0	After a week or so, the family packs up their Ford Explorer and leaves the mountains of Wyoming. Next stop, South Dakota. They stay in a house on a farm.
0:56.0	But then one day, Jade sees two police cars driving down the long dusty road towards the farm.
1:03.0	I don't know how they even found out that we were there.
1:06.0	This is not just a family road trip.
1:10.0	Later I come to find out that they were tracking the cell phone. And so stupid to not have gotten rid of it, but we didn't think it was that serious.
1:19.0	We didn't think that our case met the qualifications for justifying that big of a manhunt.
1:27.0	About a month before, this young family fled their home in Arizona at a fear they might have to give up custody of their child.
1:35.0	They crossed half a dozen states, drove over a thousand miles. That day at the farm, Jade hid from the police, but afterwards, she and Ryan had east with the baby towards Iowa.
1:48.0	After a long day of driving, they parked their SUV for the night in a Sam's Club parking lot in Sioux City.
1:55.0	A few hours later, Jade wakes up to blinding lights. She squints and sees a gun.
2:01.0	Get your hands up!
2:04.0	Do not move unless you're told to do so. Do you understand me?
2:07.0	Their daughter is seven months old and has just started to say papa.
2:12.0	We're not using the baby's name to protect her privacy. Jade is hugging her, telling her she loves her.
2:19.0	When an officer yanks open the door, Jade raises her arms in the air and prays her baby won't fall.
2:26.0	Can you put your baby somewhere? I'll take the baby.
2:29.0	Throw you window down farther.
	...

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