WHY YOU SHOULD AVOID HOSPITAL BIRTHS (by Joel Skousen from his current issue of World Affairs Brief) I realize that Americans have been convinced for decades that the birth of a child is a hospital procedure. For normal women childbirth can occur naturally as more and more parents are discovering. Moreover, hospital births are not without risks—including threats to your parental rights when you step into a the hospital. Depending on the atmosphere of the hospital, your baby could be at risk of being vaccinated against your wishes and if you object or tell them you don’t want the shots it can trigger an investigation by Child Protective Services if you don’t comply. Michael Farris of the highly regarded Home School Legal Defense Fund tells of one recent horror story: Jodi Farris [no relation] went into labor a bit earlier than she had expected—and the baby was coming rapidly. Given their location and other factors, the midwife they had hoped would deliver the baby at their home encouraged them to get in an ambulance and head to the hospital. Their baby, whom I will call “Annie,” was born in the ambulance in the parking lot of the Hershey Medical Center—a state-affiliated hospital in Pennsylvania. Hospital personnel arrived very quickly and took charge of both baby and mom. As any mother would do, Jodi immediately began to ask the nurses and attendants how her baby was doing. Jodi persisted in asking about Annie. No one would tell her anything other than “she’s in good hands and you’ll be able to see her soon.” Eventually a doctor told her that Annie scored a 9 on a physical exam applied to newborns known as the APGAR test. A score of 8 or higher is considered healthy. (It is unclear when the score was given since she was in the ambulance at birth.) But shortly after this a different doctor told Jodi that Annie was “very sick” and would need to stay in the hospital. This doctor’s comments were accompanied by an explanation of his disdain for midwives saying, “Too many people think they know what they’re doing.” About an hour later, another hospital staffer finally brought Annie to Jodi and said, “The baby is doing good. She will be able to go home in no time.” However, several hours later yet another staffer told Scott and Jodi that Annie would have to stay in the hospital for 48 to 72 hours for observation. Even though they persisted in asking why Annie would need to stay, his only answer was that “the law requires us to keep the baby for 48 hours.” When they asked for a reference to this supposed law, he answered, “you’ll have to get that from risk management.” (By the way, there is no such law in Pennsylvania.) The risk management staffer eventually told them that even though they saw nothing wrong with the baby, they just like “to keep babies like this” for 48–72 hours. The Ferrises were told that Annie would not be released for this period since it was “unsafe for her to leave the hospital.” Eventually, a risk management staffer admitted that the risk that was being managed was not the health of Annie but the risk that the hospital might get sued if something went wrong after she was discharged. [that’s the excuse, anyway] Late in the afternoon, a government social worker named Angelica Lopez-Heagy came into Jodi’s room announcing that she was there to conduct an investigation. Jodi asked to know the allegations. The social worker claimed that it would be against the law for her to show Jodi the allegations. Jodi replied that she would not be comfortable answering the questions if she couldn’t know the allegations. Immediately the social worker proclaimed, “Since you’re not going to cooperate, I’ll just go and call the police and we can take custody of the baby.” [Catch-22] Fearing that the social worker would carry out her threat, Jodi replied that she was willing to cooperate. The social worker soon intimated that the issue was Jodi’s refusal to consent to medical treatment for the baby. Jodi replied that she had no idea why anyone would say that. The social worker claimed that she had refused to allow a Vitamin K shot for Annie. Jodi replied that no one had asked her about such a shot. Moreover, she had overheard hospital staffers saying that they had already given Annie such a shot [without consent]. Neither the social worker nor any hospital staffer ever gave Jodi or Scott any example of any medically necessary treatment that they had refused for Annie. Then the hospital demanded that they give Annie shot for Hepatitis B. Jodi said that she would agree only if they tested her or Annie to see if either of them were positive. If so, then she was quite willing to have the shot for Annie. The hospital claimed that they had forgotten about this earlier when it was still possible to test that day, and that they needed to give the shot anyway without any testing. When the social worker pressed her to make an immediate decision about this shot, Jodi asked her if they could simply wait until Scott, her husband, got back before they decided. The social worker renewed her threat. If Jodi would not answer her question right then, she would call the police. And then the social worker started adding conditions. She and Scott would have to agree to sign a safety plan before she could conclude her investigation. Jodi said that she wanted her husband and an attorney to look at the plan. She felt she was in no position to read such a document and really understand what she was being pressured to sign. And then the story turns ugly. The social worker left the room and called the police. Without a court order they took custody of Annie, immediately claiming that she was suffering from illness or injury—a patently false claim. The social worker consented to the administration of the Hepatitis B shot even though no blood test had been done. The police made Jodi Ferris get up out of her hospital bed and escorted her to the entrance—they were expelling her from the hospital because she had not signed the “safety plan.” Scott met her at the entrance to the hospital. The police escorted them both off of the grounds of the hospital [without their baby]. Jodi was told that she would be allowed to return every three hours to nurse the baby through the night. Jodi and Scott were forced to spend the night that she had given birth in their car in a nearby parking lot. You read that right. They kicked this mother out of the hospital, and in order to be close enough to feed her child, she had to sleep in the car. To add insult to injury, Jodi was given access to Annie only sporadically and not every three hours. The next morning a judicial officer held a shelter care hearing. After hearing the evidence, the officer immediately returned custody of Annie to her parents [not a word of sanction or criticism for the outrageous conduct of the medical staff, caught lying and manipulating this poor parent—due in large part to a built in hostility toward people who try to evade the all controlling establishment medical system]. They were lucky. Most judicial officers are so closely connected with Child Protective Services that they almost always side with them. Farris concludes: No parents should be put through this kind of ordeal. It is not a crime to ask questions about the well-being of your child. It is not a crime to ask for testing to ensure that a procedure is needed before it is done. It is not a crime to be a protective mom. It is a moral offense of the highest order to kick a mother out of a hospital and to seize her child on the day of her birth simply because a mom wanted to have her husband read a legal document before she signed. And we believe that they violated their rights under the Constitution of the United States. And we are going to court to prove it. The HSLDF is a very worthy cause, and if you have some available funds I encourage you to support their pro-bono suit against this hospital and Child Protective Service. That’s the only way to reign in this type of outrage—make them pay.
Posted on: Fri, 02 Aug 2013 16:46:36 +0000
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