Caitlin Carnahan, the star patient of Oklahoma City’s MAT program, attended regular 12-step meetings and passed all urine tests. But when Carnahan, who was caring for her newborn son in the NICU in 2019, was questioned by State Department of Human Services officials, Carnahan felt all her achievements had been erased. It is said that Investigators asked why they used Subtex, a type of buprenorphine, during pregnancy if they knew it could cause withdrawal symptoms, Carnahan said. The woman also referenced Carnahan’s husband’s extensive career, including three arrests resulting from her domestic incidents while Carnahan was still using opioids. She asked Carnahan why she was with someone like that. “I know what she’s going to do with this, but she was really scared,” Carnahan says. “It was like a scary movie.” Her son was in foster care for eight months.
Carnahan’s doctor warned her that the hospital might call authorities, but many other women have been caught completely off guard. “I never thought CPS would come to that hospital,” says GW, who gave birth to a baby while on Subtex in Louisiana in 2019. Therefore, I asked to reveal my name in initials). After her son was taken away, her Ms. GW constantly imagined where her son was and what she was doing, marking another day without her son on her calendar.
Her lawyer pleaded with her to comply with whatever the social worker requested. “She said, ‘Keep her mouth shut.’ Just leave her laughing,” GW told me. Caseworkers believe that parental cooperation is an important factor in determining whether it is safe to send a child home. Disobedient parents are often seen as insecure or poor judgement.
Once a lawsuit is instituted, social workers can examine virtually every aspect of a mother’s life (housework habits, income, lovers, refrigerator contents, etc.). Mary Delancey, who placed her newborn son in a foster home in South Carolina in 2017, gave her caseworker a new apartment full of baby toys and stuffed animals, blankets, cots and bouncy chairs. I remember being proud to show it. She used to live in a homeless shelter. “It was a big deal,” she said. “We’ve worked really hard to get to that point.” But when the caseworker arrived, she pointed out the crib and said it was old and needed to be replaced immediately. Delancy she began to doubt herself. She said, “The more parents question, ‘Am I worthy of having my child?’, the less they try,” she said. “Because they feel that no matter what they do, they’re never going to be good enough.”
Even parents who do not remove their newborns are exposed to a level of surveillance that is difficult to endure. “She’s literally 24 hours old, so why am I ignoring her?” Blair Morgan-Dota said when she was reported on Subutex for alleged child neglect after giving birth, she said: I remember thinking Initially, a Massachusetts caseworker allowed her to leave the baby, but the stress of her case proved too much and Morgan-Dota relapsed, so authorities took her daughter away and Morgan-Dota. Dota prepared for her failure. “They make me feel like I’m not a good enough mother,” she said. “Maybe she’d be better off with someone else.”
