Author: Shoshana Walter, The Marshall Project

Shoshana Walter is a staff writer for The Marshall Project, working on investigations. Previously, Walter was a senior reporter at Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, where she examined the armed guard industry and trafficking on marijuana farms. She uncovered how court-mandated treatments for drug addiction turned thousands of people into an unpaid, shadow workforce for some of the country’s largest corporations—reporting that was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and which led to the popular investigative podcast “American Rehab.” Her work has been honored with the Livingston Award for National Reporting, the Investigative Reporters and Editors medal, the Edward R. Murrow award and the Knight Award for Public Service, among others.

Hospitals Gave Patients Meds During Childbirth, Then Reported Them For Positive Drug Tests

Across the country, hospitals are dispensing medications to patients in labor, only to report them to child welfare authorities when they or their newborns test positive for those very same substances on subsequent drug tests.

Amairani Salinas was 32 weeks pregnant with her fourth child in 2023 when doctors at a Texas hospital discovered that her baby no longer had a heartbeat. As they prepped her for an emergency cesarean section, they gave her midazolam, a benzodiazepine commonly prescribed to keep patients calm. A day later, the grieving mother was cradling her stillborn daughter when a social worker stopped by her room to deliver another devastating blow: Salinas was being reported to child welfare authorities. A drug test had turned up traces of benzodiazepine—the very medication that staff had administered before wheeling her into surgery.