For two months, as Erika Johnson ached to bond with her newborn baby and her breast milk dried up, her daughter remained in the custody of Missouri’s Department of Social Services.
Johnson and her boyfriend Blake Sinnett, both students, had prepared well for the birth of their first child and say they did nothing wrong. But the 24-year-olds are both blind.
Johnson delivered Mikeala on May 21 at Centerpoint Medical Center in Independence, but when she had difficulty breast-feeding and the baby began to turn blue, a nurse called social services.
Why? Having a visual is not the dey to this? Practice is.
The case was dropped last week and Mikeala went home, but only after spending 57 days in foster care.
via Baby Sent to Foster Care for 57 Days Because Parents Are Blind. I think that nurse needs to be fired.
July 28, 2010 at 8:03 am
How sad. Those two parents would probably better than some fully sighted parents. The Social Service personnel were extremely lacking in judgement.
July 28, 2010 at 8:25 am
Deplorable imust. Not everyone, sighted or not can make a go of breastfeeding. I think that the nurse needs to take a few refresher courses before she allowed to “help” patients.
July 28, 2010 at 9:44 am
I am a little perplexed by the title of this article: was the ACLU notified by anyone of the case, or did the case receive a lot of media attention? This is the first I have heard of it: without some sort of evidence that the ACLU even knew about the case, I can hardly condemn them for not representing this particular couple.
Also, every organization has its focus: the ACLU does serve the disabled but this is not its primary focus, and it is not the principal organization formed to do so. Why not ask where was ADAPT, the National Federation of the Blind, the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities, the American Foundation for the Blind, the Association for the Advancement of the Blind, the Center for Independent Living…?
July 28, 2010 at 9:46 am
My point is that the ACLU takes on Arizona like a fly on shiz over illegal aliens. What about these citizens rights? These people were abused imo. Their civil rights were trounced on. Where were these groups? I suppose that two people doesn’t count much these days.
July 28, 2010 at 10:15 am
Gee- my Dad was totally deaf- couldn’t hear a thing. He cared for us, changed diapers even (how very modern of him- imagine that in the 50′s and 60′s)
He took us and all the neighbor kids all over New England- guess the authorities and the other parents should have put a stop to that. Imagine, young children learning to communicate with a man who did not use sign language but read lips. Gosh, all those kids learned to enunciate and while they were at it- to think of my Dad as just like anybody else’s Dad. (Except for MY Dad could fix everybody’s bikes and taught all of us how. MY deaf Dad worked for a company that took care of all the machines at amusement parks from Old Orchard Beach in Maine down to Palisades Park in NJ. AND he took us with him in the summer to the closer parks! Every neighborhood kid got a turn during the summer and we rode the rides all day for free!)
Hmph- stupid “social” workers! They probably would have put my parents in jail or something.