Lawsuit alleges Vermont tracks pregnant women deemed unsuitable for parenthood
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Vermont’s child welfare agency relied on baseless allegations about a pregnant woman’s mental health to secretly investigate her and win custody of her daughter before the baby was born, according to a lawsuit that alleges the state routinely targets and tracks pregnant women deemed unsuitable for parenthood.
The ACLU of Vermont and Pregnancy Justice, a national advocacy group, on Wednesday sued the Vermont Department for Children and Families, a counseling center and the hospital where the woman gave birth in February 2022. The lawsuit seeks both an end to what it calls an illegal surveillance program and unspecified monetary damages for the woman, who is identified only by her initials, A.V.
According to the complaint, the director of a homeless shelter where A.V. briefly stayed in January 2022 told the child welfare agency that she appeared to have untreated paranoia, dissociative behaviors and PTSD. The state opened an investigation and later spoke to the woman’s counselor, midwife and a hospital social worker, despite having no jurisdiction over fetuses and all without her knowledge.
She was still in the dark until the moment she gave birth and her baby girl was immediately taken away, said Harrison Stark, senior staff attorney at the ACLU. She had no idea that while she was in labor, hospital officials were relaying updates to the state — including details of her cervix dilation — and had won temporary custody of the fetus. At one point, the state sought a court order forcing the woman to undergo a cesarean section, which was rendered moot because she agreed to the surgery. It took her seven months to win full custody of her daughter.
“It’s a horrific set of circumstances for our client,” said Stark. “It’s also clear from what has happened that this is not the first time the agency has done this. We have learned from several confidential sources that DCF has a pattern and practice of looking into folks like our client who are pregnant, who are of interest to the agency based on a set of unofficial criteria and who the agency is tracking on what is called a ‘high risk pregnancy docket’ or ‘high risk pregnancy calendar.’”
Chris Winter, commissioner of the Department for Children and Families, said the agency will comment once officials have reviewed the lawsuit and investigated its claims.
“We take our mission of protecting children and supporting families seriously and work hard to balance the safety and well-being of children with the rights of parents,” he said in an email.
Copley Hospital also declined to comment on the lawsuit. At Lund, the counseling center named as a defendant, the interim CEO said officials there learned of the allegations from news reports Thursday.
“We take these matters very seriously and we are actively working to gather more information to understand the situation fully,” Ken Schatz said in an email.
While it’s unclear how common such scenarios are across the country, several states allow the civil commitment of pregnant people in order to take custody of a fetus, said Kulsoom Ijaz, senior staff attorney at Pregnancy Justice.
She said what happened in Vermont highlights how pregnancy is increasingly used as a pretext to trample on people’s rights. For example, in a report released in September, the organization described an increase in women being charged with crimes related to pregnancy in the year after the U.S. Supreme Court ended the nationwide right to abortion. Most of those cases involved women charged with child abuse, neglect or endangerment, with the fetus listed as the victim, after allegations of substance use during pregnancy.
“What DCF did here is incredibly cruel. It’s discriminatory. It’s state sanctioned surveillance and stalking, and it violates Vermont’s newly enshrined right to reproductive autonomy in its state constitution,” she said. “This is an opportunity for Vermont to signal to other states, as a leader and say that these rights don’t just exist on paper. They exist in practice, too.”
The allegations in Vermont are particularly troubling given that the state has held itself up as a haven for reproductive rights, Stark said.
“To discover evidence that a state agency is essentially colluding with certain medical providers to collect information without folks’ knowledge or consent and expanding its jurisdiction unlawfully to investigate folks based on what are essentially decisions about their own reproductive health is incredibly alarming,” he said.
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