Shoshana Walter

Hospitals use drug tests that return false positives from poppy seed bagels, decongestants and Zantac. Yet newborns are being taken from parents based on the results.

The Marshall Project recently investigated how faulty drug tests at hospitals lead to pregnant women being reported to authorities and at times separated from their children.

Mothers were reported after they were given medications used routinely for pain or in epidurals, to reduce anxiety or to manage blood pressure during cesarean sections.

Hospitals routinely report parents to child welfare authorities based on error-prone drug tests. Some hospitals are changing policy as a result.

The policies create new restrictions for immigrants and people who support them — including reviving measures previously rejected by courts.

Watch our joint investigation with CBS Sunday Morning into how hospitals use unreliable test results to report parents to child welfare agencies.

In her new book, ‘Rehab: An American Scandal,’ Shoshana Walter explores how the giant substance treatment industry keeps failing many people desperate for help.

Some bills followed an investigation by The Marshall Project and Reveal that exposed the harms of widespread drug testing of pregnant patients.