They Followed Doctors’ Orders. The State Took Their Babies.

Jade Dass was taking medication to treat her addiction to opioids before she became pregnant. Scientific studies and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say this leads to the best outcomes for both mothers and babies. But after Dass delivered a healthy daughter, the hospital reported her to the Arizona Department of Child Safety, which conducted an investigation and separated her from her newborn.  

“I just couldn’t believe it, that people would act like this,” Dass says. “Like how they couldn’t see—it's, like, you have no humanity if you’re gonna take someone’s baby.”

To understand the scale of this issue, reporter Shoshana Walter, data reporter Melissa Lewis, and a team of Reveal researchers and lawyers filed 100 public records requests, putting together the first-ever tally of how often women are reported to child welfare agencies for taking prescription drugs during pregnancy. 

This week on Reveal, we follow Dass as she grapples with losing custody of her baby—and makes one last desperate attempt to keep her family together.

Walter has turned some of her reporting for Reveal into a book about the addiction treatment industry, Rehab: An American Scandal, which comes out this month. 

This is an update of an episode that originally aired in July 2023.

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