Tens of thousands of mothers were flagged to police over flawed drug tests at childbirth

Ayanna Harris-Rashid was sitting up in bed, her newborn son latched to her breast, one hand scrolling on her phone, when the police called. She was wanted on a felony charge of child neglect.

Ayanna Harris-Rashid was sitting up in bed, her newborn son latched to her breast, one hand scrolling on her phone, when the police called. She was wanted on a felony charge of child neglect.

Harris-Rashid had just had her third child in March of 2021. To ease pain and frequent nausea, she had used legal CBD gummies and a topical hemp-based ointment throughout her pregnancy. But at the hospital, she and the baby tested positive for marijuana, prompting providers to file a report with the South Carolina Department of Social Services, which forwarded the information to police, records show. Now an officer was demanding Harris-Rashid turn herself in.

Harris-Rashid said goodbye to her children and husband. "I'm so sorry," she whispered to her newborn son. A friend drove her to the sheriff's office, where she was handcuffed, strip-searched and placed for the night in a cold and crowded cell. By the time she left the jail the following morning, her milk supply had decreased and she found she could no longer breastfeed. The charge was eventually dropped.

"They shook me bare. They made me feel very indecent and inhumane," she said, adding, "This is a person, a woman, a mother, an actual individual. What justifies this?"

What happened to Harris-Rashid is happening to women across the country with staggering frequency. In at least 70,000 cases in 21 states, parents were referred to law enforcement agencies over allegations of substance use during pregnancy, according to six years of state and federal data obtained and published for the first time by The Marshall Project. In many cases, the referrals began with false positive results from flawed drug tests — sometimes triggered by the women's prescribed medications.