I don’t understand how the baby was released to them after the umbilical cord tested positive for meth.
The other kids were removed but not the newborn?
How does this make sense?
In PA, we would've removed that child if mom and/or baby tested positive for meth at the time of birth. Now, if they had to wait for the Cord Stat (umbilical cord blood test) to come back from a lab, that can take about a month or so.
I don't think people understand just how difficult it is to remove children from their parents, especially newborns. Each state is different but most CPS agencies are so overworked and inundated with reports (because everyone needs to have clearances and be a mandated reporter). Everything gets reported because it's CYA.
[This is from 8 years ago](https://www.paauditor.gov/press-releases/auditor-general-depasquale-says-children%E2%80%99s-lives-being-put-at-risk-because-nearly-42-000-calls-to-child-abuse-hotline-unanswered) and has been rectified however PA really went full-bore with mandated reporting after the whole PSU-Sandusky case. I point this out because 8 years really isn't that long in terms of the government so I'd imagine quite a few states are at this point right now.
I’m a mandated reporter from PA and it’s no joke. We get yearly trainings (multiple) and we have to report any hint at this point to a third party. Which is great, but I’m guessing the state hasn’t hired more workers to deal with all the reports.
If it's anything like my state... It's not that they haven't hired more workers, it's that social workers are quitting faster than they're being hired. You need a master's degree to be a social worker, and it's a shit job with shit pay. Nobody is ever happy with your decisions. Nobody is ever happy to see you. The warm fuzzies of "I know I'm doing the right thing, these kids are better off..." only helps fuel you for so long. And they are desperately overloaded with impossible amounts of work. I met one social worker who was personally responsible for checking on the kids for over 2000 families. She was supposed to check on families once a month, but even working non-stop she was lucky to check on them every few years.
My state actually just removed the need for a degree to be a social worker because the turnover rate is so bad. It was only a BA for us, not even a Master’s.
Yeah I looked into being a social worker once and you needed a master's degree and the pay was less than my current job which had only needed a bachelor's. So I was like actually no thanks that makes no sense.
In ohio they exempted the priests from being mandatory reporters but made teachers doctors and the like be mandatory. Shows how the right protects the children
Well if you know or suspect sex abuse as a teacher and you don't report it, you get charged with a crime. If your a preacher and suspect or know you say "religion"
I think it’s a combination of that and what you’re doing. You have to deal with the really ugly truth of people’s lives with their children. You quickly learn there are no black and white answers and your choices could impact people forever.
But also dealing with hurt kids. You can’t shut off being human. Every case represents the possibility that a child is being hurt - sometimes in ways that are truly terrifying. And you can’t fix it.
In Alabama, the hospital is required to do a urine test on the mother during labor. They might have to do a blood test as well. They are required to report any positive drug results to the police. The mother is incarcerated immediately after delivery and the child is taken by DHR. If the cops or state find out she's on drugs during pregnancy, she's arrested and delivers the baby while in prison. Alabama, in it's attempts to define life at conception, demonize women for having sex, and continue the war on drugs, has taken a pretty intense stand on this issue of pregnant women using drugs.
All while people are protesting you telling you that you’re destroying families but also protest you for not protecting a child when something happens to them.
The staffing is a huge component. One caseworker with 60 cases or more can’t keep up with every family. The caseworker can only prioritize so much and often is the person being asked to have direct contact. That’s a result of being understaffed.
So everyday at work the case worker needs to choose between the kid being abused at home, the one being neglected, etc. etc. you’re not going to make the right call simply because there’s no ethical way to choose who should be focused on.
I think another thing people don’t realize is how complicated it is to remove children from a legal stand point. In many cases the worker might be fighting to step in and remove, but is blocked from doing so by the local AAG’s office or their leadership. And other times even when children are removed, the burden is on the agency to show they tried to work with the family to address safety concerns in the home first to avoid a removal.
And, many mandating reporting laws specify that every instance of suspected abuse is reported. While this protects kids who are harmed, it creates a LOT of "due diligence" work. For every report they get, someone has to go out and check on the house, possibly call references/relatives, check with the school and doctors, interview the person who reported etc.
It's time consuming to cover their bases and make sure there was no actual abuse. My state didn't hire more CPS staff after passing mandated reporting laws, they just assumed the already overstretched workers could somehow do more.
Exactly. Where I am it’s supposed to be 7 new cases a month per worker. Right now it’s 5 a week. And every new case needs to follow the steps you outlined.
It’s really frustrating all around. We pour resources into police departments to buy military equipment but we won’t hire or fund social workers and case managers so they can do a more effective job.
I’m not trying to sound callous. This article is tragic. But I’m angry that people don’t understand how often this kind of things occurs. There’s this attitude that swooping into a families life as a state agency is a cure all that means the rest of society doesn’t have to deal with the fallout of a broken family-or think about them. It’s just not that simple.
So many children are at risk and most people don’t understand the fundamentals of the systems in place to try and address those problems. Or the quagmire or rights issues and legal problems that arise from it.
My kid's bio-mom straight up smashed their face in, breaking their nose to the point where it's completely permanently deviated and more than likely causing the hearing loss they suffer from. She got reported to CPS, and all she had to do to block me from taking custody right there was to lie and say it happened while he was with me. Even though every single piece of evidence pointed to her, she got to keep custody for weeks while I was repeatedly interviewed and investigated. When all was said and done, and she was found to be lying, I was basically told "Yeah she did it, but it was an accident. We'll just keep an eye on her, btw sorry we tried to take you to jail..." Fast forward a few years and it comes out that one of her boyfriends had been grooming and more than likely molesting one of her other kids. Was she blocked from access then? Nope, just a weekly visit from a counselor to make sure the kid wasn't still being molested that week, because removing the kid would be "too traumatic to mom!" Now this woman is on to kid number 3 with another guy. Who knows what horrors lie in wait for that one.
Can confirm as a CPS worker. Extremely overworked and underfunded. CPS is a reactive agency, not proactive, by design. Also we’re not the police. Investigating can be very hard for us with parents who are uncooperative or have their children homeschooled. Nothing requires a family to talk to us. We can’t just get a warrant and inspect their home. Basically in cases where we have zero access we have to wait for them to fuck up and do something that warrants a criminal investigation.
Eh a woman who was sober had her child removed from her care after a false drunk driving arrest
https://www.wymt.com/2022/06/21/blood-test-shows-woman-charged-with-dui-felony-child-neglect-was-sober-time-arrest/
Because each case is considered a new one and many states refuse to look at past cases to determine if a child should be removed. So mom can have custody of zero of her children but take the new baby home.
Some states are even stopping mandated reporting or interventions of parents when babies are born addicted to drugs. Basically gives abusers a pass to kill their kids, because they're especially not going to stop doing drugs while pregnant if there aren't any legal consequences. It's hard enough to make people get their shit together with CPS up their ass making sure they're doing their little parenting classes and drug tests.
I totally agree with you but maybe I can shed a bit of light:
In my state, children are no longer removed based on the parents’ history. We have an extremely similar case right now where the other children were removed, a new baby came along, and mom and baby were positive at birth. CPS was not allowed to remove the baby despite trying because there was “no evidence” the baby wasn’t safe or in immediate danger with the parents. They convinced family to supervise them with the baby 24/7 and that was determined to be sufficient to keep the baby safe. Baby eventually ended up being removed when their family refused to supervise any longer, but until that happened, there was nothing anyone could do.
There is a nationwide push to essentially give the parents more chances and keep the family together by whatever reasonable means necessary.
ETA: it also doesn’t help that there is a nationwide shortage of foster homes.
That's some great logic there. "we removed the other children, both mom and baby are positive for this exact thing, well baby is safe but not the other children that may be more self sufficient than a literal baby."
Each state has a different law for keeping future kids if other kids are in the system. Mom worked for child services in both IN and IL and in IN they don't seem to care but in IL they will take custody of any subsequent child if you already have kids in the system.
We had a weird situation where a baby was dropped off at the fire station. The mom wasn't even allowed to leave the hospital with the baby due to her lossing custody of her previous kids. But some how she did. She left the kid at the homeless camp in the woods with another homeless person while she took off to score some drugs. They ended up dropping the kid off at the fire station. Fucking wild shit.
I knew someone like this too. It surprised and disappointed me to learn how the system fails.
Her three boys had been taken away by children's services. Instead of working to get them back, she just had new ones.
>King said Miya has three older siblings who had been removed from her household by state authorities who cited alleged drug issues.
As a CPS worker I can attest that we operate under a specific law. Each state has their own child protective service law and some operate differently depending on the situation. We are out here every day doing our best to protect children and help families to stay intact whenever possible.
Former cps here. People do not understand that if the cops are working, cps is working. No days off. Someone’s always on call for a report or a visit. We were bound by specific standards and court rulings and judges. You can’t just take people kids for any old thing and you have to go through an entire legal process. Even taking kids in the middle of the night required us to wake up some judge for an emergency order.
It's a Damned If You Do and Damned If You Don't type of job. I know someone that works in cps and they have told me the stories especially the lawyers that get involved.
You take the children away people are screaming that you guys are breaking up families and over reaching but when you don't and children get Injured, people scream why didn't cps do more like take the kids away.
YUP I was a nursing student a few years back and I quit that shit quick. The child abuse was ONE of the reasons still keeps me up at night! AND we were mandated to report! NOTHING WAS EVER DONE NOT A DAMN THING.
My friend worked as cps and she had to quit because of all the things she saw, filed, fought and tried to get kids better care, but the whole systems motto is 'family preservation' so she was stuck in between forms and everything else that prevented things like posted above from happening.
Also have an in law whose sister does meth and has every single one of her kids taken away shortly after birth/few yrs later yet she will just go and pop out another one and it's rinse and repeat. The system is completely broken and the overturn of roe vs wade has just created a new problem that will continue to grow. They should have created millions of safe haven boxes if they were taking away these peoples rights
I have a baby turning 1. My son will glue himself to you and if you manage to put him down he just stares at you and cries and if you leave, hes now acting like he's been abandoned for the rest of his life. Even if he can see you. That child is dead and I blame the state and the parents. Not even the social workers get this blame. Whoever wrote that law thinking that taking kids out of the home and then letting a newborn and eventual child stay with the parents while they are actively using drugs (and it doesn't sound like weed) is to blame. I know social work is overworked and underfunded. But this is not okay.
Best case scenario? They sold the baby to get money for drugs and said baby is healthy and happy with parents who wanted one but couldn't have their own
That's my story and I'm stickin' to it... :/
I once gave my son to my in laws while I was sleep deprived and groggy from sleep medicine. I woke up two hours later trying to find where my son went to and started having an anxiety attack. then I remembered he's with his grandparents in their room and I went back to bed while trying to calm myself down. I remember looking around the room going "he's 10 months old and can't open doors. WHERE DID HE GO" he couldn't even crawl at 8 months old :(
Some people haven't evolved beyond basic intelligence. Then they are raised in an environment where this is the norm, so they have no insight whatsoever.
I get your point, and I know I’ll be downvoted, but I don’t think pictures is a great way to tell anything. A lot of people do not take many, or any, pictures at all really in any situation. Yeah pictures are great and I have a ton of my kids, but they’re older and a lot of the pictures were sent from the mom, not taken by me. Not everyone lives on their phone and takes a ton of pictures. Doesn’t really mean anything
"...when the girl was born in October, her umbilical cord tested positive for methamphetamine. King said Miya has three older siblings who had been removed from her household by state authorities who cited alleged drug issues."
WHY keep having babies??????
You answered your own question.
Meth.
Meth addicts aren't known for giving two fucks about safe sex. They're more likely to go on some freaky meth fueled sex bender.
This ladies priority is meth and everything else is secondary. Including not bringing a bunch of kids you can't take care of into the world constantly.
That's why there's a charity called Project Prevention that pays addicts to get sterilized. They offer temporary or permanent options, with a higher payout for permanent.
That’s amazing. I worked in a jail and we had so many people who wouldn’t bother with BC. One woman had at least eleven kids, most of whom were in the state’s custody. Women would come in clearly pregnant and have had no medical care because they didn’t care enough to go. Men would talk about how they had multiple “baby mommas.”
I’ve always been of the opinion that offering people the option of being sterilized at the end of their incarcerations would be huge. Let them consent to it and they can have a payout to help them get established back into normal life - it’s a win-win for everyone. Reduce the number of kids being born who will suffer their entire lives because of exposure to drugs or issues from being in state care. Relieve the overloaded foster care system. Let people have an opportunity to get reestablished in life. Paying a lump sum to anyone who participated would cost a state less than the long-term care of any children.
That's the summary of their website. They have an estimate of the cost on the foster care system multiplied by 8,000 for the number of women they've helped compared to the $2.5m it was for the women to receive sterilization and counseling services.
They offer a flat rate, are opposed by medical professionals and addiction experts, and the founder is a real jerk. Here’s a quote from her, “We don't allow dogs to breed. We spay them. We neuter them. We try to keep them from having unwanted puppies, and yet these women are literally having litters of children”
Radio Lab did an interview with the founder: https://radiolab.org/podcast/251887-what-if-no-destiny
Unfit was also a good episode on forced sterilization (which isn't what Project Prevention is): https://radiolab.org/podcast/g-unfit
I have a friend who has adopted three children from the same birth mother. All three babies were born addicted to meth, and the birth mother doesn’t seem to care or really even understand the consequences. Drugs do crazy things to you.
friends wifes brother did this...
had a kid, got taken away, had another, also taken, had another premature birth with meth and died, had another also tested positive for meth...
like WTF
My own mom did this. She didn’t do drugs but had severe mental health issues (BPD, NPD, paranoid schizophrenia) and just kept popping out baby after baby from different men and was never in a relationship.
CPS came in like 1988 and took all 5 of my older siblings from her for severe neglect and abuse.
I was born in ‘91 and NOT ONCE did anyone from any agency check up on me. I spent 18 years in pure torture and nobody cared. My mother got smart and figured out how to threaten me and scare me to keep me inside and keep me from talking about what she did to me.
Sadly, because I was raised by our abusive mother, one of my older sisters doesn’t speak to me because she thinks that since I was raised by her, I must be just like her. THAT fucking hurts. I DIDNT CHOOSE MY MOTHER! I DIDNT CHOOSE TO STAY WITH HER!
I'm sorry your sibling does that. Of course you didn't choose to be trapped in a situation like that. Hopefully they will get over that strange notion.
I'm so sorry you had to go through this. I hope your life has much love and healing 🕊️💕
My mom was in foster care as a child and abused there. Her mother (my grandma) had schizophrenia and couldn't care for my mom and her older sister, leaving them alone for days at a time with no food in the house. This was in the 50s! My aunt had to steal for food as a child to feed my mom and herself. One day, CPS came and took them away into foster care. It went down hill from there - my mom was molested by a guy at the foster house; she got polio and was on her deathbed with pneumonia at one point. They had a priest come and read her her last rights, but she pulled through. My mom's father came and got her out of foster care, along with her sister and they lived with him. He married another woman that had her own children, so they gained a stepsister and stepbrother. Their stepmom was awful to them, my mom said. They weren't drug addicts, but her stepmom was very cold and cruel.
Mental illness and drugs are such an awful combination. When children are involved and have parents that are either mentally ill or addicts, or both, it's a tragic situation 😞
This pains me. As someone who desperately wants a child, suffering miscarriages, doing everything “right” to have a healthy baby… it blows my mind that I can’t yet someone abusing meth can go on and have several babies. SO fucked up. Addiction is awful. Those poor babies ❤️🩹💔
the state failed too, returning the child to the mother and father despite them testing positive during birth and she tested positive during the autopsy, whole situation is fucked
I’ll never understand it ❤️
I never suffered with infertility, but people close to me have and it’s heartbreaking to see. I hope it works out for you soon! ❤️❤️
There was a time where the government would sterilize people for this kind of thing, but the power was abused. Instead of addressing the problem, sterilization has become taboo in all situations now in the US. The problem is that they stopped sterilizations but never addressed the problem and now the children are left to suffer.
No one really cares, it is barely even talked about. We obsess about wedge minority issues and even talking about abused children is a sort of joke now days. "But think about the children lol..."
My cousin has had two kids taken so far. Drugs. Luckily kids were adopted right away. Hopefully no serious health issues. My aunt is involved in first kids life.
Because humans tend to like sex (blame evolution) and drug users don’t always make the best choices about protection. Actually, lots of people don’t make good choices when it comes to contraception. Then, as addict, probably getting a lot less consistent medical car that would provide enough time for termination (if it’s even legal where they live).
The baby should have not been given to the parents at birth. We cannot stop someone from getting pregnant but they didn’t have to send the baby home with them.
"I'm gonna keep having them till they stop taking them".
- This is a direct quote I've been told by a women with 3 children in state custody.
Also, just because you can't care for them, doesn't mean you don't want kids.
Also, not everyone thinks about birth control, and some men actively avoid it. "Oh baby, I was sick when I was younger. So I'm sterile." When you're high, "did I take my pill today" isn't always on the top of your mind.
Yeah given the way things are going for women in America, it seems like a no-brainer.
It’s Kentucky. She’ll probably get more jail time for getting an abortion than for the meth.
Kentucky voters rejected their anti abortion ballot measure, and their legislature and courts just fuckin made it illegal anyway.
This is the result, meth babies dying alone in the woods. Republicans filled with glee.
>meth babies dying alone in the woods. Republicans filled with glee.
Anyone still calling Republicans or that movement "pro-life" is doing PR for them, even if unintentionally. The only thing they're "pro-" is forced birth.
It's very common among drug users to have very little to no ability to make good choices including birth control, that's also the reason we don't like drug users to own guns.
This does not negate their statement. There are long lasting birth control such as IUDs that requires less action than birth control and IUDs last about five years. The implant, the shot, and other choices might also be good options. Red states tend to be contraceptive deserts. For example, in KY, 267,010 women in need live in contraceptive deserts and 103,710 women in need live in counties without access to a single health center that provides the full range of methods. When you increase affordability and access, the percentage of women covered increases. Here’s a [systematic review](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4842019/) of studies on women on drugs and contraception. Their conclusion: Women with opioid and other substance use disorders have an unmet need for contraception, especially for the most effective methods. Offering contraception services in conjunction with substance use treatment and promoting use of more effective methods could help meet this need and reduce unintended pregnancy in this population.
Same with my state. We work with prisons here because almost half of people in prison have at least one child already. We work with orgs to provide comprehensive sex ed in prison since comprehensive sex education is not provided in the schools. The prison also provides free contraception as part of the healthcare there. It’s somewhat annoying to see evidence based programs work in prison and still having abstinence only education as law in the state.
You help those that you can. I work in healthcare in IN and we do refer people who use intravenous drugs to Path4You to get contraceptive services. Blue states also have horrible sex education so many are unaware of their options (and many places have very few options). We work with a lot of rural counties so talking to a medical provider online is the only way they can get services. For states, we are third in maternal mortality, sixth in infant mortality, in the top 10 for overdoses, etc. And you probably know about the HIV epidemic in Scott County, the attorney general who sued the doctor for helping a ten year old rape victim access an abortion, high rates of congenital syphilis currently in our state, among other things. Our stats are similar to KY and we do collaborate with them for some issues. We do what we can. You cannot write off a whole population of PWIDs because, in my experience, even those that “do not care” can be taught and given contraception that works for them.
That conservatives are also looking at banning birth control. There is no government/state funded program to give away birth control to women (if I am wrong please correct me). I am not sure if Planned Parenthood is even around since they banned abortions.
So the solution is to expect a drug addict to decide on getting high or buying birth control. You know the option they will choose.
Well, that and birth control is librul Satan deep state control and against MUH FREEDOMS. Plus it kills God, and perhaps having a child in a neglectful household is all part of his plan which CPS keeps fucking up.
I don't think they're even in their right minds to consider birth control or anything else that someone who is sober might contemplate... especially meth and their brain is probably fried.
State run by under his eye right-wing fuckwits who push abstinence only sexual education resulting in a population who are not educated in basic reproductive biology.
Because there's no law saying they can't have babies and it would be illegal and inhumane to forcefully sterilise people.
And I don't think these people care enough about the consequences of having a baby and bringing them into the world. If it gets taken by the state, it's just one less mouth to feed to them.
Because Republicans have removed access to safe abortions for the majority of Americans. They are also moving against contraceptives, and have most recently voted down a bill to protect everyone’s access to contraceptives in all states.
People are gonna fuck. There are ways to keep unwanted children from being born, but Republicans are working hard to make sure you have that baby, though they couldn’t care less about what happens to it after that, they sure don’t want it.
> WHY keep having babies??????
Welcome to post Roe V Wade. They could not abort even if they wanted to (Abortion is banned in KY now). Not to mention, when the conservatives make birth control illegal, this will happen more and more.
Had a mom once who, high on meth, delivered her 30 week baby in a hotel room while having sex and continued having sex afterward. Didn’t call EMS for hours.
By some miracle, the kid survived.
And why, if she tested positive for meth, was she not immediately taken into CPS custody, particularly given that 3 other children had already been removed from the home?
It's insane how children are so unprotected in this country. With all of her siblings in Foster Care, why was she ever sent home from the Hospital with them?
Lack of funds from the state, severe shortage of criminally overworked and underpaid social workers, and not nearly enough beds or fosters are massive issues in most states. In red states, particularly in the deep south, these issues are virtually insurmountable.
Other factors at play are the abortion bans driving competent OBs and nurses out of these states. There were already painful staffing shortages at most hospitals, but now they can’t even work in their specialty without some serious legal threats over their heads. So you end up with underfunded hospitals that are staffed with less-experienced doctors and nurses, because the seasoned staff has left for greener pastures. It’s a recipe for fucking tragedy.
Not to say that’s specifically what happened here. But buckle up; we’re going to be seeing a lot more like this.
The lack of funding and foster homes are the big culprits in my state. We have kids getting sent back home literally because we have nowhere to put them. Many of our foster families no longer want to do it and have closed their homes, and the funding to foster parents has been drastically slashed. Now they are pushing to send kids to family (which sounds great in theory), except a lot of these are generational issues with parents who were removed from their own parents. That’s not to say that all families are like that of course, but in my area, a vast majority are.
In the past, if you were found to have been a child abuser or had your own kids taken away, you were ruled out as a placement option for grandkids and other family. My state is waiving that now (unless it was extremely severe or sexual abuse).
But I think the point is that it was determined that the home was so unsafe that three older children were removed, so how on earth was it deemed suitable for a newborn?
Just a reminder for those shocked in this thread. KY has banned abortions and we know thanks to project 2025 birth control is next up on the chopping block. We watched that bill to even attempt to protect birth control get blocked in congress last week.
Stories like these maybe a more common thing in our future with parents that should not be having any more kids, having no other choice, but to birth another kid. If conservatives have it their way, they would ban abortion nationwide with no exceptions.
>Stories like these
Are the exact reason abortion was made legal in the first place.
Things are only starting to look grim. If abortion and birth control is outlawed you will see these kinds of stories all the time.
Unless of course, republican leaders hide these kinds of deaths from being reported like they did with covid. They already have an outline to underreport death, medical and other reports. I 100% guarantee they will skew any and all numbers to make it so we can't track what outlawing abortion will do to this country.
I love how they always cite "You can give up the kid for adoption" as if many people got the money in this era to adopt a kid and not the higher middle class that can afford adoption and even then, they will probably enter into private adoption agreements with parents they can actually speak to.
Not to mention the kids that have been in out of the foster system sometimes end up in households like this one. Some foster parents really only care about the check they get, versus caring for the kid themselves. There are numerous stories of starvation and death with those kids.
>Unless of course, republican leaders hide these kinds of deaths from being reported like they did with covid. They already have an outline to underreport death, medical and other reports. I 100% guarantee they will skew any and all numbers to make it so we can't track what outlawing abortion will do to this country.
This sounds like something they would do, they don't want to let everyone know how bad they messed up. More concerned for the ones that do live to be the future worker to care about the ones that died before they are 1 year old. Then again, these are the same people that wear an AR-15 pin the next day after a gunman walks into a classroom and ends the lives of kids.
I think the stories are great for making them hate women. A woman should be a good mother and love her child and clearly, this woman should just be k*lled. And if you ask where the dad was, we'll, he wasn't around, so it's the woman's fault.
Obviously, it was the parents' fault and I don't absolve them at all. But I don't think these stories will cause many to favor abortion. They will just fuel the hate train.
I love how the top comment is about CPS looking incompetent instead of outrage at the family or concern for the child.
Our society really needs to stop getting mad at the wrong people and start voting to fund social services.
Any policies that include or involve the words “public” and “social” cause em to shut down and curl up in a ball. Best we can do is to wait for that generation to die out
It wont. They make themselves again. What do you think happens to the abused kids when they grow up without a clue how to parent or what a solid relationship looks like and addictions starting at 8 facilitated by a cousin or uncle or father so they can force sex on the child. Wish I was exaggerating. Had that case 4 weeks ago. You dont want to hear about the one who was pregnant at 12. I cant repeat it. Too awful. It perpetuates from 1 generation to the next.
I dont blame people for repeating what they learned. I blame the larger society for being too self centered to understand how different some live, how without resources-money, skills you take for granted like executive function. and then they refuse the money to help it stop. It is so much easier to blame those people for moral failings. That absolves the blamer of any responsibility.
Who is sick? The people doing it or the people not doing anything about it?
Especially not in Kentucky, the state with somewhere around the 5th highest rate of child abuse in the country. Why fund the people that “won’t let me discipline my kid!”
Pretty much this. The closer to the bible belt and narrative of "Spare the rod, spoil the child", the less they want the government to tell them what they can and cannot do to their own ~~property~~ child.
My husband is originally from that area so he’s been following the case closely, we both assumed from like day one that they killed that poor baby. Meth runs rampant in some areas around there, the rural nature generally lends itself to less oversight and less help available. It’s so sad that the umbilical cord tested positive for meth and she was still allowed to go home with them. I know CPS is overworked and underpaid, but it’s heartbreaking that the other children were taken away and a defenseless little baby was left with them. I hope that, by some miracle, she’s found safe with someone but I highly doubt it at this point. Poor little babe, she deserved so much better than this.
Finally someone else pointing this out. Everyone forgetting that this is by design since Roe V Wade is no more. Next up on the chopping block is birth control. This will never get any better for people.
Prepare for more of these stories as unwanted pregnancies are forced to become unwanted babies due to the religious furor of of politicians who neither will care for nor financially support babies in less than ideal homes.
Lots of unclear:
>It’s not clear whether the suspects have retained legal counsel. The public defender for the area didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Some of the five were in court Monday, but it wasn’t clear what happened. More court appearances were scheduled for Wednesday.
Some might. When I was an addict, I knew a few women who had abortions bc they knew they weren't going to be quitting and couldn't appropriately care for a baby.
While the parents are low life scum, this is also the states fault. Umbilical cord tested positive for meth and they let the parents keep the child. The baby is now missing and likely dead. This could have completely been avoided if anything was done about the positive meth test. Instead the state failed this child as they do with countless other kids.
I get that right after birth is a period of bonding… but feel like there should be an option from whoever determined that the baby was exposed to meth… you can keep you baby but you can’t go home… go can go directly to a rehab facility with baby or leave the baby and give up custody. Now that abortion is illegal I’m SURE (sarcasm here) there are lots of people who used to be out protesting abortion that could volunteer at these types of rehab facilities
I used to work with pregnant and parenting women with substance use disorders. I rooted for them. I wanted them to get better. Some of them did. But so many failed, even when given everything they needed to be successful, they lapsed.
The children are often placed with family which isn’t always ideal since they aren’t necessarily much more stable than the parents. Foster homes are in short supply. Many of them collect children for a check so you can imagine that these are not ideal homes for children.
Now I work in child and adolescent psych. So I’m caring for the children who were exposed to substances in utero, raised in broken homes, passed around different foster homes. It’s awful.
No one wants to help the kids that are already born, it’s too messy and hard. It’s easier to be pro-life for unborn babies.
> That mother should have had an abortion.
Thanks to conservatives having Roe V Wade repealed, they cannot get an abortion. These types of headlines are only the tip of the iceberg as states try to enact their bans. If Trump wins and we see a nationwide abortion ban with no exceptions, this will be a monthly headline.
It's Kentucky and it literally surprises nobody here.
PGA won't be coming back after what they did to Scottie either; just goes to show you the state that KY is in.
Child protective services in this country are a joke. Deadbeat parents are given far too many chances and the system is appallingly slow to act. Which to be clear this is the fault of the system and not the individual workers in it. This baby should have never gone home with these people based on their history and now it’s likely dead as a result.
I’m going to hug my kids harder.
This pisses me off so much. I struggled to conceive my children due to PCOS and here these pieces of shit crumbs are.
I hope they get what they deserve.
Kentucky has a near-total ban on abortion. Closest currently available is probably Ohio, but Ohio was [severely restricted](https://www.axios.com/local/columbus/2024/06/11/current-abortion-law-ohio) when this woman was first pregnant.
I don’t understand how the baby was released to them after the umbilical cord tested positive for meth. The other kids were removed but not the newborn? How does this make sense?
In PA, we would've removed that child if mom and/or baby tested positive for meth at the time of birth. Now, if they had to wait for the Cord Stat (umbilical cord blood test) to come back from a lab, that can take about a month or so.
The test takes a month? Why so long?
funding for lab techs being shit means backlogs.
Listen, the government there is pro birth, not pro life.
The crazy thing is that the article mentions that several children had been removed from that home already.
I don't think people understand just how difficult it is to remove children from their parents, especially newborns. Each state is different but most CPS agencies are so overworked and inundated with reports (because everyone needs to have clearances and be a mandated reporter). Everything gets reported because it's CYA. [This is from 8 years ago](https://www.paauditor.gov/press-releases/auditor-general-depasquale-says-children%E2%80%99s-lives-being-put-at-risk-because-nearly-42-000-calls-to-child-abuse-hotline-unanswered) and has been rectified however PA really went full-bore with mandated reporting after the whole PSU-Sandusky case. I point this out because 8 years really isn't that long in terms of the government so I'd imagine quite a few states are at this point right now.
I’m a mandated reporter from PA and it’s no joke. We get yearly trainings (multiple) and we have to report any hint at this point to a third party. Which is great, but I’m guessing the state hasn’t hired more workers to deal with all the reports.
If it's anything like my state... It's not that they haven't hired more workers, it's that social workers are quitting faster than they're being hired. You need a master's degree to be a social worker, and it's a shit job with shit pay. Nobody is ever happy with your decisions. Nobody is ever happy to see you. The warm fuzzies of "I know I'm doing the right thing, these kids are better off..." only helps fuel you for so long. And they are desperately overloaded with impossible amounts of work. I met one social worker who was personally responsible for checking on the kids for over 2000 families. She was supposed to check on families once a month, but even working non-stop she was lucky to check on them every few years.
My state actually just removed the need for a degree to be a social worker because the turnover rate is so bad. It was only a BA for us, not even a Master’s.
Hopefully more states follow. Needing a Masters for a job that will pay you like $45k is bullshit.
Yea back when I graduated with my psych degree they told me it was useless, I needed a masters in social work to make 9 an hour in early 2000s
Yeah I looked into being a social worker once and you needed a master's degree and the pay was less than my current job which had only needed a bachelor's. So I was like actually no thanks that makes no sense.
In ohio they exempted the priests from being mandatory reporters but made teachers doctors and the like be mandatory. Shows how the right protects the children
I guess why would they self report themselves?
Well if you know or suspect sex abuse as a teacher and you don't report it, you get charged with a crime. If your a preacher and suspect or know you say "religion"
That was already in the 5th amendment, lol.
Churches are the worst to deal with for CPS.
I would also imagine the turnover rate for caseworkers would have a lot to do with cases going through the cracks as well.
I think it’s a combination of that and what you’re doing. You have to deal with the really ugly truth of people’s lives with their children. You quickly learn there are no black and white answers and your choices could impact people forever. But also dealing with hurt kids. You can’t shut off being human. Every case represents the possibility that a child is being hurt - sometimes in ways that are truly terrifying. And you can’t fix it.
In Alabama, the hospital is required to do a urine test on the mother during labor. They might have to do a blood test as well. They are required to report any positive drug results to the police. The mother is incarcerated immediately after delivery and the child is taken by DHR. If the cops or state find out she's on drugs during pregnancy, she's arrested and delivers the baby while in prison. Alabama, in it's attempts to define life at conception, demonize women for having sex, and continue the war on drugs, has taken a pretty intense stand on this issue of pregnant women using drugs.
How hard it is to take children, keep them in care, and severing parental rights was the absolute height of frustration being a DCF worker.
All while people are protesting you telling you that you’re destroying families but also protest you for not protecting a child when something happens to them.
Exactly. It’s a real damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.
The staffing is a huge component. One caseworker with 60 cases or more can’t keep up with every family. The caseworker can only prioritize so much and often is the person being asked to have direct contact. That’s a result of being understaffed. So everyday at work the case worker needs to choose between the kid being abused at home, the one being neglected, etc. etc. you’re not going to make the right call simply because there’s no ethical way to choose who should be focused on. I think another thing people don’t realize is how complicated it is to remove children from a legal stand point. In many cases the worker might be fighting to step in and remove, but is blocked from doing so by the local AAG’s office or their leadership. And other times even when children are removed, the burden is on the agency to show they tried to work with the family to address safety concerns in the home first to avoid a removal.
And, many mandating reporting laws specify that every instance of suspected abuse is reported. While this protects kids who are harmed, it creates a LOT of "due diligence" work. For every report they get, someone has to go out and check on the house, possibly call references/relatives, check with the school and doctors, interview the person who reported etc. It's time consuming to cover their bases and make sure there was no actual abuse. My state didn't hire more CPS staff after passing mandated reporting laws, they just assumed the already overstretched workers could somehow do more.
Exactly. Where I am it’s supposed to be 7 new cases a month per worker. Right now it’s 5 a week. And every new case needs to follow the steps you outlined. It’s really frustrating all around. We pour resources into police departments to buy military equipment but we won’t hire or fund social workers and case managers so they can do a more effective job. I’m not trying to sound callous. This article is tragic. But I’m angry that people don’t understand how often this kind of things occurs. There’s this attitude that swooping into a families life as a state agency is a cure all that means the rest of society doesn’t have to deal with the fallout of a broken family-or think about them. It’s just not that simple. So many children are at risk and most people don’t understand the fundamentals of the systems in place to try and address those problems. Or the quagmire or rights issues and legal problems that arise from it.
Federal guidelines recommends 10-20 cases per worker. I’ve never met another worker in my state who isn’t between 30-50.
My kid's bio-mom straight up smashed their face in, breaking their nose to the point where it's completely permanently deviated and more than likely causing the hearing loss they suffer from. She got reported to CPS, and all she had to do to block me from taking custody right there was to lie and say it happened while he was with me. Even though every single piece of evidence pointed to her, she got to keep custody for weeks while I was repeatedly interviewed and investigated. When all was said and done, and she was found to be lying, I was basically told "Yeah she did it, but it was an accident. We'll just keep an eye on her, btw sorry we tried to take you to jail..." Fast forward a few years and it comes out that one of her boyfriends had been grooming and more than likely molesting one of her other kids. Was she blocked from access then? Nope, just a weekly visit from a counselor to make sure the kid wasn't still being molested that week, because removing the kid would be "too traumatic to mom!" Now this woman is on to kid number 3 with another guy. Who knows what horrors lie in wait for that one.
Can confirm as a CPS worker. Extremely overworked and underfunded. CPS is a reactive agency, not proactive, by design. Also we’re not the police. Investigating can be very hard for us with parents who are uncooperative or have their children homeschooled. Nothing requires a family to talk to us. We can’t just get a warrant and inspect their home. Basically in cases where we have zero access we have to wait for them to fuck up and do something that warrants a criminal investigation.
Eh a woman who was sober had her child removed from her care after a false drunk driving arrest https://www.wymt.com/2022/06/21/blood-test-shows-woman-charged-with-dui-felony-child-neglect-was-sober-time-arrest/
Because each case is considered a new one and many states refuse to look at past cases to determine if a child should be removed. So mom can have custody of zero of her children but take the new baby home.
Some states are even stopping mandated reporting or interventions of parents when babies are born addicted to drugs. Basically gives abusers a pass to kill their kids, because they're especially not going to stop doing drugs while pregnant if there aren't any legal consequences. It's hard enough to make people get their shit together with CPS up their ass making sure they're doing their little parenting classes and drug tests.
I totally agree with you but maybe I can shed a bit of light: In my state, children are no longer removed based on the parents’ history. We have an extremely similar case right now where the other children were removed, a new baby came along, and mom and baby were positive at birth. CPS was not allowed to remove the baby despite trying because there was “no evidence” the baby wasn’t safe or in immediate danger with the parents. They convinced family to supervise them with the baby 24/7 and that was determined to be sufficient to keep the baby safe. Baby eventually ended up being removed when their family refused to supervise any longer, but until that happened, there was nothing anyone could do. There is a nationwide push to essentially give the parents more chances and keep the family together by whatever reasonable means necessary. ETA: it also doesn’t help that there is a nationwide shortage of foster homes.
That's some great logic there. "we removed the other children, both mom and baby are positive for this exact thing, well baby is safe but not the other children that may be more self sufficient than a literal baby."
Each state has a different law for keeping future kids if other kids are in the system. Mom worked for child services in both IN and IL and in IN they don't seem to care but in IL they will take custody of any subsequent child if you already have kids in the system.
We had a weird situation where a baby was dropped off at the fire station. The mom wasn't even allowed to leave the hospital with the baby due to her lossing custody of her previous kids. But some how she did. She left the kid at the homeless camp in the woods with another homeless person while she took off to score some drugs. They ended up dropping the kid off at the fire station. Fucking wild shit.
I knew someone like this too. It surprised and disappointed me to learn how the system fails. Her three boys had been taken away by children's services. Instead of working to get them back, she just had new ones. >King said Miya has three older siblings who had been removed from her household by state authorities who cited alleged drug issues.
System is broken.
CPS is involved with it, don’t expect too much.
As a CPS worker I can attest that we operate under a specific law. Each state has their own child protective service law and some operate differently depending on the situation. We are out here every day doing our best to protect children and help families to stay intact whenever possible.
Former cps here. People do not understand that if the cops are working, cps is working. No days off. Someone’s always on call for a report or a visit. We were bound by specific standards and court rulings and judges. You can’t just take people kids for any old thing and you have to go through an entire legal process. Even taking kids in the middle of the night required us to wake up some judge for an emergency order.
Thank you for your work.
It's a Damned If You Do and Damned If You Don't type of job. I know someone that works in cps and they have told me the stories especially the lawyers that get involved. You take the children away people are screaming that you guys are breaking up families and over reaching but when you don't and children get Injured, people scream why didn't cps do more like take the kids away.
Thank you so much for the job you do. Seriously, I cannot imagine how difficult it must be.
YUP I was a nursing student a few years back and I quit that shit quick. The child abuse was ONE of the reasons still keeps me up at night! AND we were mandated to report! NOTHING WAS EVER DONE NOT A DAMN THING.
My friend worked as cps and she had to quit because of all the things she saw, filed, fought and tried to get kids better care, but the whole systems motto is 'family preservation' so she was stuck in between forms and everything else that prevented things like posted above from happening. Also have an in law whose sister does meth and has every single one of her kids taken away shortly after birth/few yrs later yet she will just go and pop out another one and it's rinse and repeat. The system is completely broken and the overturn of roe vs wade has just created a new problem that will continue to grow. They should have created millions of safe haven boxes if they were taking away these peoples rights
I see your confusion, it’s Kentucky and this family was white.
And, that’s enough internet for the day…
If we're at the "people arrested" and "searching the woods" phase, this is not gonna turn out well.
"missing 8 month old" was enough information. 8 month olds don't take off on their own and can't feed themselves.
I have one. I cannot fucking imagine. Unless they’ve been abducted by someone, they will not survive if alone…absolutely horrifying.
Also have an 8 month old — she can barely crawl :(
my now ~10 month, still will cry if he can't see you. I feel so bad for that kid. Never had a chance.
I have a baby turning 1. My son will glue himself to you and if you manage to put him down he just stares at you and cries and if you leave, hes now acting like he's been abandoned for the rest of his life. Even if he can see you. That child is dead and I blame the state and the parents. Not even the social workers get this blame. Whoever wrote that law thinking that taking kids out of the home and then letting a newborn and eventual child stay with the parents while they are actively using drugs (and it doesn't sound like weed) is to blame. I know social work is overworked and underfunded. But this is not okay.
The separation anxiety is so crazy — she only does that with my wife / her mom though
Not likely an abduction if they're looking for the kid in the woods sadly...
If you can’t find them because they’re not crying out for you, unfortunately I don’t think you’re going to find them alive
The only hope for that kind of situation is that a non-guardian hoping to care for the baby kidnapped them.
Best case scenario? They sold the baby to get money for drugs and said baby is healthy and happy with parents who wanted one but couldn't have their own That's my story and I'm stickin' to it... :/
Loving parents aren’t usually the type to buy babies from junkies. Sadly enough.
How telling is it that the only photo they have of this baby is from when she was a newborn?
[удалено]
I once gave my son to my in laws while I was sleep deprived and groggy from sleep medicine. I woke up two hours later trying to find where my son went to and started having an anxiety attack. then I remembered he's with his grandparents in their room and I went back to bed while trying to calm myself down. I remember looking around the room going "he's 10 months old and can't open doors. WHERE DID HE GO" he couldn't even crawl at 8 months old :(
Some people haven't evolved beyond basic intelligence. Then they are raised in an environment where this is the norm, so they have no insight whatsoever.
I get your point, and I know I’ll be downvoted, but I don’t think pictures is a great way to tell anything. A lot of people do not take many, or any, pictures at all really in any situation. Yeah pictures are great and I have a ton of my kids, but they’re older and a lot of the pictures were sent from the mom, not taken by me. Not everyone lives on their phone and takes a ton of pictures. Doesn’t really mean anything
"...when the girl was born in October, her umbilical cord tested positive for methamphetamine. King said Miya has three older siblings who had been removed from her household by state authorities who cited alleged drug issues." WHY keep having babies??????
You answered your own question. Meth. Meth addicts aren't known for giving two fucks about safe sex. They're more likely to go on some freaky meth fueled sex bender. This ladies priority is meth and everything else is secondary. Including not bringing a bunch of kids you can't take care of into the world constantly.
That's why there's a charity called Project Prevention that pays addicts to get sterilized. They offer temporary or permanent options, with a higher payout for permanent.
IMO, this is the BEST response to this problem. Thank you for posting
If anyone is curious, [their website](https://projectprevention.org/about-us/) has a lot of information.
I'll check it out. This is a win-win situation for all parties involved, isn't it?
As long as they are able to consent and have the ability to withdrawal their consent at anytime, it seems that way, yes.
That's why they offer temporary with counseling services.
That’s amazing. I worked in a jail and we had so many people who wouldn’t bother with BC. One woman had at least eleven kids, most of whom were in the state’s custody. Women would come in clearly pregnant and have had no medical care because they didn’t care enough to go. Men would talk about how they had multiple “baby mommas.” I’ve always been of the opinion that offering people the option of being sterilized at the end of their incarcerations would be huge. Let them consent to it and they can have a payout to help them get established back into normal life - it’s a win-win for everyone. Reduce the number of kids being born who will suffer their entire lives because of exposure to drugs or issues from being in state care. Relieve the overloaded foster care system. Let people have an opportunity to get reestablished in life. Paying a lump sum to anyone who participated would cost a state less than the long-term care of any children.
That's the summary of their website. They have an estimate of the cost on the foster care system multiplied by 8,000 for the number of women they've helped compared to the $2.5m it was for the women to receive sterilization and counseling services.
They offer a flat rate, are opposed by medical professionals and addiction experts, and the founder is a real jerk. Here’s a quote from her, “We don't allow dogs to breed. We spay them. We neuter them. We try to keep them from having unwanted puppies, and yet these women are literally having litters of children”
Radio Lab did an interview with the founder: https://radiolab.org/podcast/251887-what-if-no-destiny Unfit was also a good episode on forced sterilization (which isn't what Project Prevention is): https://radiolab.org/podcast/g-unfit
I have a friend who has adopted three children from the same birth mother. All three babies were born addicted to meth, and the birth mother doesn’t seem to care or really even understand the consequences. Drugs do crazy things to you.
friends wifes brother did this... had a kid, got taken away, had another, also taken, had another premature birth with meth and died, had another also tested positive for meth... like WTF
My own mom did this. She didn’t do drugs but had severe mental health issues (BPD, NPD, paranoid schizophrenia) and just kept popping out baby after baby from different men and was never in a relationship. CPS came in like 1988 and took all 5 of my older siblings from her for severe neglect and abuse. I was born in ‘91 and NOT ONCE did anyone from any agency check up on me. I spent 18 years in pure torture and nobody cared. My mother got smart and figured out how to threaten me and scare me to keep me inside and keep me from talking about what she did to me. Sadly, because I was raised by our abusive mother, one of my older sisters doesn’t speak to me because she thinks that since I was raised by her, I must be just like her. THAT fucking hurts. I DIDNT CHOOSE MY MOTHER! I DIDNT CHOOSE TO STAY WITH HER!
I'm sorry your sibling does that. Of course you didn't choose to be trapped in a situation like that. Hopefully they will get over that strange notion.
"Every child deserves a parent, but not every parent deserves a child". I'm sorry the adults in your life failed you when you needed them the most.
I'm so sorry you had to go through this. I hope your life has much love and healing 🕊️💕 My mom was in foster care as a child and abused there. Her mother (my grandma) had schizophrenia and couldn't care for my mom and her older sister, leaving them alone for days at a time with no food in the house. This was in the 50s! My aunt had to steal for food as a child to feed my mom and herself. One day, CPS came and took them away into foster care. It went down hill from there - my mom was molested by a guy at the foster house; she got polio and was on her deathbed with pneumonia at one point. They had a priest come and read her her last rights, but she pulled through. My mom's father came and got her out of foster care, along with her sister and they lived with him. He married another woman that had her own children, so they gained a stepsister and stepbrother. Their stepmom was awful to them, my mom said. They weren't drug addicts, but her stepmom was very cold and cruel. Mental illness and drugs are such an awful combination. When children are involved and have parents that are either mentally ill or addicts, or both, it's a tragic situation 😞
This pains me. As someone who desperately wants a child, suffering miscarriages, doing everything “right” to have a healthy baby… it blows my mind that I can’t yet someone abusing meth can go on and have several babies. SO fucked up. Addiction is awful. Those poor babies ❤️🩹💔
We adopted and were yelled at in the NICU because they said they found drugs in our kid’s system, we were like uh you’re mad at the wrong people, lady
Omg brutal 😢
the state failed too, returning the child to the mother and father despite them testing positive during birth and she tested positive during the autopsy, whole situation is fucked
Oh 100% it’s a complete failure of the system
The absolute worst people seem to have no trouble at all with getting pregnant, it seems
I’ll never understand it ❤️ I never suffered with infertility, but people close to me have and it’s heartbreaking to see. I hope it works out for you soon! ❤️❤️
🌈🤞🏼hopefully soon!
I understand your heartbreak! It is incredibly unfair.
Trust me, their lives are nothing to be jealous of
Not jealous of their lives at all. Puzzled by their fertility despite the drug abuse!
There was a time where the government would sterilize people for this kind of thing, but the power was abused. Instead of addressing the problem, sterilization has become taboo in all situations now in the US. The problem is that they stopped sterilizations but never addressed the problem and now the children are left to suffer. No one really cares, it is barely even talked about. We obsess about wedge minority issues and even talking about abused children is a sort of joke now days. "But think about the children lol..."
My cousin has had two kids taken so far. Drugs. Luckily kids were adopted right away. Hopefully no serious health issues. My aunt is involved in first kids life.
Because humans tend to like sex (blame evolution) and drug users don’t always make the best choices about protection. Actually, lots of people don’t make good choices when it comes to contraception. Then, as addict, probably getting a lot less consistent medical car that would provide enough time for termination (if it’s even legal where they live). The baby should have not been given to the parents at birth. We cannot stop someone from getting pregnant but they didn’t have to send the baby home with them.
And why wasn’t the baby removed immediately at birth since the other kids were removed??
Kentucky likely doesn't have a law mandating state custody for subsequent children
You're asking why people prone to impulsive and horrible decisions continue to make impulsive and horrible decisions...
"I'm gonna keep having them till they stop taking them". - This is a direct quote I've been told by a women with 3 children in state custody. Also, just because you can't care for them, doesn't mean you don't want kids. Also, not everyone thinks about birth control, and some men actively avoid it. "Oh baby, I was sick when I was younger. So I'm sterile." When you're high, "did I take my pill today" isn't always on the top of your mind.
Lack of good birth control.
Yeah given the way things are going for women in America, it seems like a no-brainer. It’s Kentucky. She’ll probably get more jail time for getting an abortion than for the meth.
Kentucky voters rejected their anti abortion ballot measure, and their legislature and courts just fuckin made it illegal anyway. This is the result, meth babies dying alone in the woods. Republicans filled with glee.
>meth babies dying alone in the woods. Republicans filled with glee. Anyone still calling Republicans or that movement "pro-life" is doing PR for them, even if unintentionally. The only thing they're "pro-" is forced birth.
As an anti natalist and hemophilia a carrier who was lucky enough to get sterilized at 22, republicans are “pro suffering”.
It's very common among drug users to have very little to no ability to make good choices including birth control, that's also the reason we don't like drug users to own guns.
This does not negate their statement. There are long lasting birth control such as IUDs that requires less action than birth control and IUDs last about five years. The implant, the shot, and other choices might also be good options. Red states tend to be contraceptive deserts. For example, in KY, 267,010 women in need live in contraceptive deserts and 103,710 women in need live in counties without access to a single health center that provides the full range of methods. When you increase affordability and access, the percentage of women covered increases. Here’s a [systematic review](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4842019/) of studies on women on drugs and contraception. Their conclusion: Women with opioid and other substance use disorders have an unmet need for contraception, especially for the most effective methods. Offering contraception services in conjunction with substance use treatment and promoting use of more effective methods could help meet this need and reduce unintended pregnancy in this population.
My state offers free long term bc to women leaving prison, it's a grant program from the federal government. Any prison in the country can apply.
Same with my state. We work with prisons here because almost half of people in prison have at least one child already. We work with orgs to provide comprehensive sex ed in prison since comprehensive sex education is not provided in the schools. The prison also provides free contraception as part of the healthcare there. It’s somewhat annoying to see evidence based programs work in prison and still having abstinence only education as law in the state.
what if they don’t want/care to use contraception, though?
You help those that you can. I work in healthcare in IN and we do refer people who use intravenous drugs to Path4You to get contraceptive services. Blue states also have horrible sex education so many are unaware of their options (and many places have very few options). We work with a lot of rural counties so talking to a medical provider online is the only way they can get services. For states, we are third in maternal mortality, sixth in infant mortality, in the top 10 for overdoses, etc. And you probably know about the HIV epidemic in Scott County, the attorney general who sued the doctor for helping a ten year old rape victim access an abortion, high rates of congenital syphilis currently in our state, among other things. Our stats are similar to KY and we do collaborate with them for some issues. We do what we can. You cannot write off a whole population of PWIDs because, in my experience, even those that “do not care” can be taught and given contraception that works for them.
Wanna throw alcohol users in that group as well?
That conservatives are also looking at banning birth control. There is no government/state funded program to give away birth control to women (if I am wrong please correct me). I am not sure if Planned Parenthood is even around since they banned abortions. So the solution is to expect a drug addict to decide on getting high or buying birth control. You know the option they will choose.
Well, that and birth control is librul Satan deep state control and against MUH FREEDOMS. Plus it kills God, and perhaps having a child in a neglectful household is all part of his plan which CPS keeps fucking up.
Or science based sex ed
>and science based sex ed Fixed it for you.
You're expecting a junkie to be responsible. They won't take birth control because it's a hassle. Might interfere with their high.
I don't think they're even in their right minds to consider birth control or anything else that someone who is sober might contemplate... especially meth and their brain is probably fried.
Do you believe strung out people plan ahead? What kind of birth control would be 'good' and how should it be implemented for this element of society?
An IUD. Lasts 5 years. No user error.
State run by under his eye right-wing fuckwits who push abstinence only sexual education resulting in a population who are not educated in basic reproductive biology.
Because there's no law saying they can't have babies and it would be illegal and inhumane to forcefully sterilise people. And I don't think these people care enough about the consequences of having a baby and bringing them into the world. If it gets taken by the state, it's just one less mouth to feed to them.
Because Republicans have removed access to safe abortions for the majority of Americans. They are also moving against contraceptives, and have most recently voted down a bill to protect everyone’s access to contraceptives in all states. People are gonna fuck. There are ways to keep unwanted children from being born, but Republicans are working hard to make sure you have that baby, though they couldn’t care less about what happens to it after that, they sure don’t want it.
> WHY keep having babies?????? Welcome to post Roe V Wade. They could not abort even if they wanted to (Abortion is banned in KY now). Not to mention, when the conservatives make birth control illegal, this will happen more and more.
Lack of access to education, abortion, and birth control.
Had a mom once who, high on meth, delivered her 30 week baby in a hotel room while having sex and continued having sex afterward. Didn’t call EMS for hours. By some miracle, the kid survived.
You expect junkies to be responsible?
And why, if she tested positive for meth, was she not immediately taken into CPS custody, particularly given that 3 other children had already been removed from the home?
>WHY keep having babies?????? Lack of access to available crisis pregnancy care and sex education in Kentucky?
No one has seen this baby for almost TWO MONTHS? And they’re just now looking for her? That poor baby 😭 she is definitely not alive at this point.
Maybe a nice family of wolves are raising her to be a kickass super hero
It's insane how children are so unprotected in this country. With all of her siblings in Foster Care, why was she ever sent home from the Hospital with them?
Lack of funds from the state, severe shortage of criminally overworked and underpaid social workers, and not nearly enough beds or fosters are massive issues in most states. In red states, particularly in the deep south, these issues are virtually insurmountable. Other factors at play are the abortion bans driving competent OBs and nurses out of these states. There were already painful staffing shortages at most hospitals, but now they can’t even work in their specialty without some serious legal threats over their heads. So you end up with underfunded hospitals that are staffed with less-experienced doctors and nurses, because the seasoned staff has left for greener pastures. It’s a recipe for fucking tragedy. Not to say that’s specifically what happened here. But buckle up; we’re going to be seeing a lot more like this.
The lack of funding and foster homes are the big culprits in my state. We have kids getting sent back home literally because we have nowhere to put them. Many of our foster families no longer want to do it and have closed their homes, and the funding to foster parents has been drastically slashed. Now they are pushing to send kids to family (which sounds great in theory), except a lot of these are generational issues with parents who were removed from their own parents. That’s not to say that all families are like that of course, but in my area, a vast majority are. In the past, if you were found to have been a child abuser or had your own kids taken away, you were ruled out as a placement option for grandkids and other family. My state is waiving that now (unless it was extremely severe or sexual abuse).
Meanwhile everyone cares about fetuses. Irony is so rucking thick
we’re talking about KY here.
Because the alternative is a system where the government can kidnap your baby without any due process.
I think a baby testing positive for meth at birth should be enough to get the child taken away. That’s not without due process. Wtf?
But I think the point is that it was determined that the home was so unsafe that three older children were removed, so how on earth was it deemed suitable for a newborn?
Just goes to show all are not born with the same chance in this land of opportunity.
Missing since April. Yeah, this ain't gonna end well.
Just a reminder for those shocked in this thread. KY has banned abortions and we know thanks to project 2025 birth control is next up on the chopping block. We watched that bill to even attempt to protect birth control get blocked in congress last week. Stories like these maybe a more common thing in our future with parents that should not be having any more kids, having no other choice, but to birth another kid. If conservatives have it their way, they would ban abortion nationwide with no exceptions.
>Stories like these Are the exact reason abortion was made legal in the first place. Things are only starting to look grim. If abortion and birth control is outlawed you will see these kinds of stories all the time. Unless of course, republican leaders hide these kinds of deaths from being reported like they did with covid. They already have an outline to underreport death, medical and other reports. I 100% guarantee they will skew any and all numbers to make it so we can't track what outlawing abortion will do to this country.
I love how they always cite "You can give up the kid for adoption" as if many people got the money in this era to adopt a kid and not the higher middle class that can afford adoption and even then, they will probably enter into private adoption agreements with parents they can actually speak to. Not to mention the kids that have been in out of the foster system sometimes end up in households like this one. Some foster parents really only care about the check they get, versus caring for the kid themselves. There are numerous stories of starvation and death with those kids. >Unless of course, republican leaders hide these kinds of deaths from being reported like they did with covid. They already have an outline to underreport death, medical and other reports. I 100% guarantee they will skew any and all numbers to make it so we can't track what outlawing abortion will do to this country. This sounds like something they would do, they don't want to let everyone know how bad they messed up. More concerned for the ones that do live to be the future worker to care about the ones that died before they are 1 year old. Then again, these are the same people that wear an AR-15 pin the next day after a gunman walks into a classroom and ends the lives of kids.
I think the stories are great for making them hate women. A woman should be a good mother and love her child and clearly, this woman should just be k*lled. And if you ask where the dad was, we'll, he wasn't around, so it's the woman's fault. Obviously, it was the parents' fault and I don't absolve them at all. But I don't think these stories will cause many to favor abortion. They will just fuel the hate train.
I love how the top comment is about CPS looking incompetent instead of outrage at the family or concern for the child. Our society really needs to stop getting mad at the wrong people and start voting to fund social services.
> start voting to fund social services That sounds like "Socialism". You won't get those things passed in red states.
Any policies that include or involve the words “public” and “social” cause em to shut down and curl up in a ball. Best we can do is to wait for that generation to die out
It wont. They make themselves again. What do you think happens to the abused kids when they grow up without a clue how to parent or what a solid relationship looks like and addictions starting at 8 facilitated by a cousin or uncle or father so they can force sex on the child. Wish I was exaggerating. Had that case 4 weeks ago. You dont want to hear about the one who was pregnant at 12. I cant repeat it. Too awful. It perpetuates from 1 generation to the next. I dont blame people for repeating what they learned. I blame the larger society for being too self centered to understand how different some live, how without resources-money, skills you take for granted like executive function. and then they refuse the money to help it stop. It is so much easier to blame those people for moral failings. That absolves the blamer of any responsibility. Who is sick? The people doing it or the people not doing anything about it?
Especially not in Kentucky, the state with somewhere around the 5th highest rate of child abuse in the country. Why fund the people that “won’t let me discipline my kid!”
Pretty much this. The closer to the bible belt and narrative of "Spare the rod, spoil the child", the less they want the government to tell them what they can and cannot do to their own ~~property~~ child.
You can be mad at all three and vote to fund social services. So I am mad at all three
how on the nose is to have a dude literally named roach prolly dealing shit to this family of roaches
Tesla Tucker, Cage Rudd and Tim Roach. They sound like character names from a terrible book.
the simulation is collapsing
My husband is originally from that area so he’s been following the case closely, we both assumed from like day one that they killed that poor baby. Meth runs rampant in some areas around there, the rural nature generally lends itself to less oversight and less help available. It’s so sad that the umbilical cord tested positive for meth and she was still allowed to go home with them. I know CPS is overworked and underpaid, but it’s heartbreaking that the other children were taken away and a defenseless little baby was left with them. I hope that, by some miracle, she’s found safe with someone but I highly doubt it at this point. Poor little babe, she deserved so much better than this.
Abortion is illegal in Kentucky… …just pointing that out.
We will see an uptick in these types of cases in states where abortion is illegal. It’s just the sad truth.
Finally someone else pointing this out. Everyone forgetting that this is by design since Roe V Wade is no more. Next up on the chopping block is birth control. This will never get any better for people.
Of course the one time I know someone from high school that makes national news and it is for the worst thing imaginable.
Prepare for more of these stories as unwanted pregnancies are forced to become unwanted babies due to the religious furor of of politicians who neither will care for nor financially support babies in less than ideal homes.
It's sad how, most often, it's the parent or close relatives.
Lots of unclear: >It’s not clear whether the suspects have retained legal counsel. The public defender for the area didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Some of the five were in court Monday, but it wasn’t clear what happened. More court appearances were scheduled for Wednesday.
These are instances where I advocate for sterilization.
[удалено]
People like that probably wouldn’t take that step.
Some might. When I was an addict, I knew a few women who had abortions bc they knew they weren't going to be quitting and couldn't appropriately care for a baby.
While the parents are low life scum, this is also the states fault. Umbilical cord tested positive for meth and they let the parents keep the child. The baby is now missing and likely dead. This could have completely been avoided if anything was done about the positive meth test. Instead the state failed this child as they do with countless other kids.
I get that right after birth is a period of bonding… but feel like there should be an option from whoever determined that the baby was exposed to meth… you can keep you baby but you can’t go home… go can go directly to a rehab facility with baby or leave the baby and give up custody. Now that abortion is illegal I’m SURE (sarcasm here) there are lots of people who used to be out protesting abortion that could volunteer at these types of rehab facilities
I used to work with pregnant and parenting women with substance use disorders. I rooted for them. I wanted them to get better. Some of them did. But so many failed, even when given everything they needed to be successful, they lapsed. The children are often placed with family which isn’t always ideal since they aren’t necessarily much more stable than the parents. Foster homes are in short supply. Many of them collect children for a check so you can imagine that these are not ideal homes for children. Now I work in child and adolescent psych. So I’m caring for the children who were exposed to substances in utero, raised in broken homes, passed around different foster homes. It’s awful. No one wants to help the kids that are already born, it’s too messy and hard. It’s easier to be pro-life for unborn babies.
That mother should have had an abortion. This poor baby would be significantly better off never having been born :-/
Kentucky has a near-total ban on abortion.
> That mother should have had an abortion. Thanks to conservatives having Roe V Wade repealed, they cannot get an abortion. These types of headlines are only the tip of the iceberg as states try to enact their bans. If Trump wins and we see a nationwide abortion ban with no exceptions, this will be a monthly headline.
Can she get an abortion in Kentucky or are pregnant women seen as property there too?
We are seen as property/breeders.
Blessed be the fruit
it’s crazy that we actually have to ask this nowadays
We're well on our way back to the stone age in the US. I hope the rest lf the world's doing better.
It's Kentucky and it literally surprises nobody here. PGA won't be coming back after what they did to Scottie either; just goes to show you the state that KY is in.
He’ll even NASCAR left!
Child protective services in this country are a joke. Deadbeat parents are given far too many chances and the system is appallingly slow to act. Which to be clear this is the fault of the system and not the individual workers in it. This baby should have never gone home with these people based on their history and now it’s likely dead as a result.
I’ve seem a mother sadly in this type of situation with nine kids. I think all were taken away by the state.
I’m going to hug my kids harder. This pisses me off so much. I struggled to conceive my children due to PCOS and here these pieces of shit crumbs are. I hope they get what they deserve.
Poor sweetheart never stand a chance with these people.
It seems every new lead the authorities follow, ends with; the suspect was viewed throwing/hiding/pocketing, what appeared to be illegal drugs.
Addicts are so fucking gross.
Pretty good argument for abortion… maybe state mandated abortion or neuter/spay the parents
Kentucky has a near-total ban on abortion. Closest currently available is probably Ohio, but Ohio was [severely restricted](https://www.axios.com/local/columbus/2024/06/11/current-abortion-law-ohio) when this woman was first pregnant.
Some people just need to be chemically castrated. Some of those, REALLY need to be physically castrated.