New York City Will No Longer Test Pregnant Patients for Drugs Without Consent

Lisa Sangoi, co-director and co-founder of advocacy group Movement for Family Power, explained that the practice of drug testing pregnant women or their babies, and then reporting those results to child welfare officials, is rooted in the war on drugs. Drug testing "targets black and brown communities for policing, for surveillance, and for control in a way that white and wealthy people who also use drugs at the same rate are rarely if ever policed," she told Gothamist. Movement for Family Power submitted a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request for data, which found that hundreds of newborns with positive toxicology tests in NYC are reported to child welfare services every year.

Black and Brown children in New York City account for "87% of reports of child neglect or abuse, even though they represent 23% and 36% of the child population respectively," Gothamist reports. These gross disparities get even worse as children age through the child welfare system. Close to 56% of New York City children in foster care last year were Black, according to the Administration for Children’s Services, while 5.3% were white.