A lawsuit alleges that Vermont's child welfare agency, the Department for Children and Families (DCF), used baseless mental health claims to secretly investigate a pregnant woman and obtain custody of her newborn daughter before the birth. The ACLU of Vermont and Pregnancy Justice filed the lawsuit, accusing DCF of routinely tracking pregnant women deemed unfit mothers. The lawsuit seeks monetary damages for the woman and an end to what it describes as an illegal surveillance program.
A lawsuit filed this week accuses Vermont’s child welfare agency of using baseless allegations about a pregnant woman's mental health to secretly investigate her and win custody of her daughter before the baby's birth. The ACLU of Vermont and Pregnancy Justice, a national advocacy group, filed the lawsuit on Wednesday against the Vermont Department for Children and Families, a counseling center and the hospital where the woman gave birth in February 2022.
The director of a homeless shelter where A.V. stayed in January 2022 told the child welfare agency that she appeared to have untreated paranoia, dissociative behaviors and PTSD, according to the lawsuit. The state began investigating and eventually spoke to the woman’s counselor, midwife and a hospital social worker without her knowledge, even though it had no jurisdiction over fetuses.
What DCF did here is incredibly cruel,' Ijaz said. 'It’s discriminatory. Its state sanctioned surveillance and stalking, and it violates Vermont’s newly enshrined right to reproductive autonomy in its state constitution. 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.
CHILD WELFARE PREGNANCY SURVEILLANCE REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS LEGAL CASE
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