State seizes child from new mom because she ate a poppy seed bagel

Tuesday, July 09, 2013 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: Child Protective Services, poppy seed, parents rights

(NaturalNews) One of the biggest problems with the massive (and growing) Administrative Branch of government is that it is a punitive entity devoid of the ability to reason. The "one-size-fits-all" approach to rule-making and regulations has made it impossible for the bureaucracy - either on the state or federal level - to utilize rational thought-processing when particular cases or issues don't fit the mold, so to speak.

Take the case of 24-year-old Elizabeth Mort, a Pennsylvania woman who had her newborn child taken from her by Lawrence County child welfare agents, all for eating a bagel that contained poppy seeds.

Per ABC News:

In 2010 [Mort], with help from the Pennsylvania office of the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit against Lawrence County child welfare authorities and Jameson Hospital in Pittsburgh. When Mort was in the hospital to deliver her baby, Isabella Rodriguez, in April 2010, she tested positive for opiates after eating a bagel, her lawyer said. The hospital alerted the county Department of Public Welfare, which, along with two police officers, forcibly removed a 3-day-old Isabella from Mort's home for five days.

'I was devastated'

Apparently no one bothered to ask her about her dietary habits for the previous few days. If they had, maybe - just maybe - someone would have put two and two together.

"I was devastated. I just cried and cried and cried. I didn't want to let her go. I was heartbroken," said Mort at a news conference after she filed her suit.

It took almost a week before authorities finally figured out she was no drug addict and returned her daughter to her.

According to Mort she had purchased a single poppy seed bagel from a local Dunkin' Donuts shop on her way to the hospital. Reports said the child never tested positive for drugs - which should have been another indicator that Mort wasn't on anything.

In her suit she said Jameson Hospital had used a threshold for its tests that was simply too low, which resulted in false positives from things like foods and common medicines. The federal standard for opiates is 2,000 nanograms per ML, but Jameson officials alert authorities if they find only 300 nanograms in a patient's system.

Besides agreeing to the payout, the hospital said it would also change its policies for drug testing, according to officials who spoke to ABC News. "The hospital will now alert county authorities only if a baby, and not the mother, tests positive for drugs, according to ACLU staff attorney Sara Rose, who represented Mort," the news affiliate reported.

The Administrative State continues to grow

Also, Lawrence County has also agreed to inform mothers when hospital workers obtain a positive drug test before they seek a court order to remove a child from a home.

"I think they are pleased this has been resolved," said Rose regarding her client's family. "This was a painful, horrific experience. Isabella is now 3. She's very cute and doing very well."

These sorts of things are what happens when we allow those who are supposed to "represent" us construct layer after layer of bureaucracy - a bureaucracy that crushes, stifles, harasses, intimidates and subjugates We the People in ways we don't even always realize. It is all-consuming and self-serving.

Worse, this massive Administrative State, which talk-show host Mark Levin has deemed "the fourth branch of government," continues growing in size and power every week. It is just a matter of time before it consumes the entire nation.

Sources:

http://www.breitbart.com

http://abcnews.go.com

http://www.naturalnews.com