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| A wealth of research suggests Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s child-confiscation-at-birth directive will lead to more child deaths. But she justifies the directive by saying, in effect, well, they haven’t died yet. A directive likely to cost lives is justified with a claim that it saves lives. Orwell would understand. |
This week, without explanation, New Mexico’s Supreme Court upheld Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s child-confiscation-at-birth directive. Under this directive, issued nearly a year ago, any child “born exposed to methamphetamines, fentanyl, polysubstance, or diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome” is taken away on-the-spot.
Since Grisham issued her decree, more than 200 children have
been confiscated, torn from their mothers during the most important hours of
their lives, their first. Since then, says the governor, in a comment quoted in
some form over and over: none has died. That claim has become a mantra, echoed
by the take-the-child-and-run fan club among state journalists, which, sadly,
seems to encompass a lot of major news organizations.
But Grisham’s claim is, at best, incomplete, and at worst, grossly misleading.
What the governor should have said is None has died – yet.
Because the evidence is overwhelming that, for all sorts of reasons, some of those children the governor and her allies claim to have saved will die prematurely. Others will suffer other grievous harm. It will happen because they were taken needlessly. But it will happen in ways that insulate Grisham, and the advocates and journalists who support the confiscation-at-birth policy from any accountability. Was that the governor’s intent? Of course not. But it’s the likely result.
Here are some of the things research tells us that the governor either doesn’t know or chose to ignore:
● Some children will die because of the intrinsic toxicity of removal itself. I’m not even talking about the high rate of physical and sexual abuse in foster care; I’m talking about inherent trauma; the kind of trauma documented by that study I keep citing from Sweden – the one showing that, in typical cases, children placed in foster care were more than four times more likely to die by age 20 than even comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes. The most common cause of death was suicide. The numbers aren’t small. Among children left in their own homes, 1.8% died before age 20. Among the foster children, it was 8.6%.
This study is just one of so many showing so many horrible outcomes for foster youth – again, when compared to comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes, that it’s now possible to calculate how many more children will suffer all sorts of grievous harm, including premature death, because of things like Grisham’s confiscation at birth policy and similar actions that encourage needless placement.
I think this kind of intrinsic toxicity of placement is what
New Yorker writer Larissa MacFarquhar was getting at in what amounts to a
message to her fellow journalists, a message many reporters in New Mexico
seem determined to ignore.
● And there are other terrible consequences for
children. As we pointed out in
our rebuttal to a report from an even more clueless New Mexico politician,
a clue to those consequences can be found in a study conducted during a
previous “worst drug plague ever,” crack cocaine:
Researchers studied two groups of children born with cocaine in their systems; one group was placed in foster care, another left with birth mothers able to care for them. After six months, the babies were tested using all the usual measures of infant development: rolling over, sitting up, reaching out. Typically, the children left with their birth mothers did better. For the foster children, the separation from their mothers was more toxic than the cocaine.
Similarly, consider what The New York Times found when it looked at the best way to treat infants born with opioids in their systems. According to the Times:
[A] growing body of evidence suggests that what these babies need is what has been taken away: a mother. Separating newborns in withdrawal can slow the infants’ recovery, studies show, and undermine an already fragile parenting relationship. When mothers are close at hand, infants in withdrawal require less medication and fewer costly days in intensive care.
“Mom is a powerful treatment,” said Dr. Matthew Grossman, a pediatric hospitalist at Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital who has studied the care of opioid-dependent babies.
● On top of that, as the ACLU and two courageous legislators, State Sen. Linda López and Rep. Micaela Lara Cadena, pointed out when they sought to stop this anti-child policy, that policy poses direct threats to children’s lives and health:
The directive causes the very harm it purports to prevent. Stigma and criminalization drive families away from care — parents may avoid prenatal appointments, travel out of state to give birth, or conceal their health history from providers, leaving both mother and child worse off.
As the drug policy experts at the Reason Foundation put it in a critique of the confiscation-at-birth policy
Decades of public health evidence show New Mexico’s new mandate is a superficial fix that undermines effective, long-term solutions.
As the ACLU also notes, the point is not that no child ever should be taken under these circumstances. Odds are there are some among those 200 children for whom removal, while extremely harmful, still was less harmful than leaving them in their homes. But, as the ACLU explains,
A decision to remove a newborn from their mother should not be determined by a blanket policy. Instead, it should be made through an individualized assessment of the particular circumstances of each child. The right to due process of law requires that every family be treated as an individual family unit –– not treated as a category. New Mexico children deserve the chance to grow up with the people who love them and for decisions made about their wellbeing to be grounded in law, medicine, and their actual circumstances.”
But while the directive is enormously dangerous for children, it’s perfect for politicians and their enablers. Because, assuming the governor is correct, none of the children has died yet.
By the time that happens, it may be years from now. By then, the child might be in her or his third foster home, or maybe institutionalized, or trapped in some awful makeshift placement and driven to suicide – as, of course, happened in New Mexico, twice in 2025 alone.
By then, Grisham will be long out of office. The journalists will have collected their little awards and moved on, after proudly pointing to Grisham’s policy on the part of the award entry form that says, “What did the stories accomplish?” So when that child needlessly confiscated at birth suffers lifelong debilitating illness, or injury – or dies prematurely – no one will hold any of them accountable.
Meanwhile, a policy that makes it more likely that more children will die is justified on grounds that none has died yet. George Orwell would have understood.
