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 Senator Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, the top Democrat on the
children and families subcommittee, is calling for oversight
hearings, in part to understand why a longstanding federal law
directing states to safeguard the newborns is not being enforced.
Another Democrat, Senator Charles Schumer of New York, wants the
Obama Administration to put “an emergency surge” of funds from the
new federal budget toward addressing the growing number of
drug-dependent newborns.
The calls come after a Reuters investigation earlier this month
identified 110 examples of babies and toddlers whose mothers used
opioid drugs during their pregnancies and who died under preventable
circumstances after being sent home from hospitals to families
ill-equipped to keep them safe. Six women who accidentally killed
their babies while on drugs said in interviews that they wished they
had received more help from hospitals or social workers. All but one
of the mothers were sentenced to prison time in the deaths.
Casey said he was “deeply disturbed” by the findings. “This is
unacceptable when children’s lives are at stake,” Casey wrote in a
letter to Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, a Republican who
chairs the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
Alexander’s office didn't respond to requests for comment.
Despite a 12-year-old federal law that calls on states to protect
drug-dependent newborns, Reuters found that thousands of babies born
to mothers who use opioids during pregnancy are being sent home
without social-service evaluations and safe-care plans –
requirements under the Keeping Children and Families Safe Act.
Since 2003, when the law was passed, the number of newborns
diagnosed with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome has skyrocketed – from
4,991 cases in 2003 to 27,315 in 2013, according to a Reuters
analysis of hospital discharge data kept by the federal government.
“It’s become a sad fact that the latest victims of the prescription
drug crisis in this country are the most vulnerable in our society,
innocent babies,” Schumer said in a news release. The senator called
for the administration to direct a portion of the $47 million
allocated in the recent budget for a substance-abuse agency toward
helping opioid-exposed babies. Schumer did not ask for a specific
amount of money.
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services said the
senator’s request is being considered.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also called for action.
McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, said the Reuters series
“brings to the forefront a problem” that he has urged the Obama
Administration to address faster.
In the House of Representatives, Representative Evan Jenkins, a
Republican from West Virginia, has introduced legislation that would
make it easier for cities to create and operate facilities designed
to care for opioid-affected babies and mothers in the critical first
month after birth. Jenkins helped found one such facility in his
hometown of Huntington, West Virginia.
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Jenkins said the news agency’s investigation “showed the devastating
effects prenatal drug exposure has on our nation’s babies and the
magnitude of the crisis across the country and in my home state of
West Virginia.”
Some advocacy groups are pushing for congressional steps to address
the issue, while others are recommending caution.
The Pennsylvania-based child welfare organization Center for
Children’s Justice asked for “immediate, not delayed action” in a
letter signed by 24 other organizations representing children’s
advocates, pediatricians, nurses, social workers and churches. The
letter was sent earlier this month to Casey and other Pennsylvania
lawmakers in Washington.
The California-based Children and Family Futures called in a letter
to congressional staffers for oversight hearings and an
investigation into whether state and county child welfare agencies
are writing plans for safe care as the law requires.
Two other groups raised concerns about what would happen to mothers
and families if child protection workers became more involved in
cases like those profiled by Reuters.
The National Advocates for Pregnant Women called the Reuters
investigation “the latest in a long line of journalistic reports
that perpetrate stigma” against women. “These ‘bad mothers’ are
frequent scapegoats in a nation that is itself addicted to
punishment,” the group said in a statement.
Another group, the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform,
argued that more intervention by child protection authorities would
be counterproductive. “Whenever we try to take a swing at ‘bad
mothers,’ the blow lands on the children,” wrote the group’s
executive director, Richard Wexler, in an opinion piece published by
Reuters.
The Reuters investigation, “Helpless & Hooked,” can be found at
http://reut.rs/1NSc7uC
(Edited by Blake Morrison)
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