NCCPR news and commentary roundup, week ending December 11, 2024

● You may need to read this excerpt from a story by The Marshall Project and Reveal twice, because the first time you may think: Wait that can’t be right.  Oh yes it can: 

Across the country, hospitals are dispensing medications to patients in labor, only to report them to child welfare authorities when they or their newborns test positive for those very same substances on subsequent drug tests, an investigation by The Marshall Project and Reveal has found. 

The positive tests are triggered by medications routinely prescribed to millions of birthing patients in the U.S. every year. The drugs include morphine or fentanyl for epidurals or other pain relief, anxiety medications, and two different blood pressure meds prescribed for C-sections. 

Please keep this in mind whenever you hear politicians and family police agencies fearmonger about parental “drug abuse.” 

● The New York City Family Policy Project has a new report on “The Protective Power of Cash” and what can be done to mobilize that protective power to keep children out of the family policing system. 

● And with the New York City Council scheduled to hold a hearing today (Dec. 12) concerning the city’s family police agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, I have a column in the New York Daily News that asks “Can ACS stand up to foster care panic?” 

These items are relevant beyond New York because the New York City system is less bad than most. Wherever you are, it’s probably worse. 

In other news:

● The Associated Press reports that President Biden has designated a national monument honoring the Native Americans whose lives were damaged and sometimes destroyed by the network of so-called boarding schools into which so many were forced in an effort to eradicate Native America.  From the story: 

“We’re not about erasing history. We’re about recognizing history — the good, the bad and the ugly,” Biden said. “I don’t want people forgetting 10, 20, 30, 50 years from now and pretend[ing] it didn’t happen.” 

Still, reparations would be better. 

Stealing the children of the poor and the disfavored is a worldwide phenomenon:

● Politico Europe reports on how Belgium did it.  

● The National Catholic Reporter tells the story of how the Vatican, the Italian government and an organization that ultimately would become part of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops conspired to do it.  The story is based on a new book The Price of Children: Stolen Lives in a Land Without Choice. 

60 Minutes also did a story:

One footnote: The book’s author, Maria Laurino told NCR: 

[O]ne of the church's concerns at the time was the growing influence of the Italian Communist Party and fear that if these children, boys in particular, stayed in the country, they could one day join the Communist Party and fight against the church.

If that sounds familiar to American scholars, it may be because when Charles Loring Brace stole impoverished American children and put them on “orphan trains,” starting in the 1850s, his rationale was almost identical.  He feared that impoverished immigrant children might become embittered at the wealth they saw all around them. Then, Brace said, 

“Let …society beware, when the outcast vicious reckless multitude of New York boys swarming now in every foul alley and low street, come to know their power and use it.” [Emphasis in original.]

And finally:

● A transgender former foster youth shook hands with U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace. She had him arrested. And here's an update.