(TotalConservative.com) – A Boston area hospital is updating its practices on reporting drug use related to heroin and other hard substances. Black patients, especially black women who have young children or are pregnant will no longer be reported to authorities for child endangerment in cases where substance abuse alone is suspected or treated and no immediate threat to the child is observed.
Don’t worry that children dying from accidental drug exposure is a serious risk, suggests Dr. Sarah Wakeman. She’s the senior director for Substance Use Disorder at Mass General Brigham. She argued that drug testing and reporting new mothers for criminally using drugs while pregnant wasn’t “compassionate” and was contributing to “systemic racism” in a bulletin announcing the changes.
Critics contend that leaving black children in the care of drug addicts is actually racist. Wakeman said that the efforts were a part of their “United Against Racism” program which is about the pursuit of “health equity,” which she elaborated as prioritizing conditions that have “the greatest racial disparities in outcomes.” She noted that black women are more often reported to the police than white women for substance abuse in the context of pregnancy. She said that black women are more likely to be drug tested as well.
Wakeman did not explain the context in which white or black pregnant women were drug tested, nor did she explain that the black community in Boston has a serious crime problem. Instead, Wakeman blames “the system.”
Curiously, Wakeman and other woke policy architects like her fail to consider the impact this has on the children involved. This means that a child with a drug-addicted and likely abusive mother won’t be removed from her custody so that liberal hospital staff can feel better about themselves for not-reporting a black individual to the police for criminal behavior.
Allison Bryant, MD, MPH works in the equity office at Mass General Brigham. She’s certain that only cases that present “imminent risk” should be reported to police. She suggested that they need to “turn our lens inward” to combat the “stigma and inequity” regarding black women who use hard drugs.
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