Two mothers are suing two New Jersey hospitals for performing drug tests during childbirth without their consent. These turned out to be false positives due to poppy seed bagels.
Two women, Kate L. and Kaitlin K., represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey (ACLU-NJ), regretted that the hospitals were not only conducting their tests without notice, but also without notice.
“No one should be subjected to unnecessary and non-consensual drug testing. Our customers are sending a clear message to hospitals that these testing and reporting policies are unacceptable,” said Molly Linhorst, attorney for ACLU-NJ.
According to court documents, the two women had consumed a poppy seed bagel, which led to a positive result for opiates.
“I feel hurt. This whole ordeal has been extremely stressful and has turned our lives upside down. And now, because of what happened, I live in fear of medical tests and how they could be used against me as a mother,” Kaitlin K. claimed, adding that she learned the lab used a threshold well below the federal government’s standard.In fact, the threshold was 200 times lower than the guidelines.
Despite the lack of opioids in the analyzes of the two newborns, Hackensack University Medical Center and Virtua Voorhees Hospital nevertheless filed a complaint with the youth protection agency. She was traumatized by the months of investigation, we read in an ACLU-NJ press release.
“I felt like the doctors were questioning my character and parenting skills,” said Kate L.
Why false alarms?
According to the Directorate-General for Competition, Consumer Protection and Fraud Prevention in France, poppy seeds are oilseeds of the plant ‘Papaver somniferum L.’ which naturally contains opium alkaloids, the best known of which are morphine and codeine.