Such testing tends to happen at the discretion of the hospital. "Private hospitals in rich neighborhoods rarely test new mothers for drugs, whereas hospitals serving primarily low-income moms make those tests routine and sometimes mandatory," concludes The News' Oren Yaniv. This is true more broadly. According to the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, "More than eighteen states now address the issue of pregnant women’s drug use in their civil child neglect laws, and a growing number of these states make it possible to remove a child based on nothing more than a single positive drug test."

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