Lawsuit alleges Vermont tracks pregnant women deemed unsuitable for
parenthood
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[January 18, 2025]
By HOLLY RAMER
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.
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“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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