Shocking video shows tragic reality of newborns struggling with drug addiction

Drug-addicted women allowed to take their babies home

In the United States, every nineteen minutes a newborn is diagnosed with neonatal abstinence syndrome. The illness the result of withdrawing from drugs their mothers abused during pregnancy.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - In the last decade, 130,000 newborns were diagnosed with an opioid addiction in the United States. Unfortunately, the infants suffer the effects of withdrawals, which can be seen in this disturbing YouTube video.

In the past five years, 110 newborns were declared healthy enough to return home with their drug-addicted mothers and were killed by a variety of preventable deaths. Of the 110, forty died of suffocation and thirteen died after consuming toxic doses of methadone, heroin, oxycodone or other opioids.

The others died in various ways, such as one 10-day-old girl who was loaded in a washing machine with dirty laundry and died. Her mother was high on methamphetamine and opioids at the time.

Seventy-five percent of the infant deaths were caused by the mother, her boyfriend, husband or a relative. Three quarters of the 110 fatalities involved CPS workers who were notified of the mother's addiction but failed to adhere to the federal law requiring them to act.

In 2003, Congress passed the Keeping Children and Families Safe Act when 5,000 drug-addicted infants were born in the U.S.

The last year to offer data concerning infant drug-addicts was 2013, which Reuters reported to show 27,000 diagnosed cases of neonatal abstinence syndrome.

The KCFS Act requires states to protect the drug-addicted babies regardless of whether the drugs the mothers took were prescribed or illegal. Health care providers are required to call child protection services and social workers are meant to ensure the infant's safety after it has been returned home.

Unfortunately, most states have ignored the law and have failed to contact CPS. Reuters discovered 36 states that have laws or policies that don't require medical staff to report every single case. Up to nine states and the District of Columbia seem to be adhering to the law, but the remaining states have revealed such confusing policies that even CPS and medical authorities are left confused.

Due to the lack of proper reporting and investigating, people like Clorissa Jones harm their babies before they are even born.

Jones told Metro, "I was in labor, in the bathroom shooting heroin, about to give birth to my child."
After giving birth, she returned home where she continued her addiction. Luckily for her son, Jacoby, she lost custody of him after crashing into a parked car while she was on her way to buy drugs. Jacoby was only 22-days-old and was strapped in the back seat of her vehicle.

When she later became pregnant again, her son Braxton was born addicted to methadone, which Jones took to temper her heroin addiction.

Braxton suffered neonatal abstinence syndrome for two weeks, but has since recovered in most areas, though he does have trouble feeding.

Jones has been deemed safe enough to keep Braxton and, after following programs, is due to regain custody of Jacoby later this month.

Jim Greenwood, former U.S. Representative, said, "The fact that the mother is in treatment is a good thing. But that doesn't prove that she has a place to live that's safe.

"It doesn't prove that she knows how to parent ... It doesn't say anything about the baby's situation. And this is all about protecting the baby."

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