#because Mila was just fine and her jaundice cleared up

[just-a-little-radish]

These articles are both from today, April 7, 2023. I’ve combined different quotes from both articles below for a fuller picture of this case.

Two weeks ago, Dallas parents Temecia and Rodney Jackson opted for a home birth for their newborn daughter, Mila, with licensed midwife Cheryl Edinbyrd.

Shortly after Mila’s birth last month, upon taking her to see their pediatrician, they learned she had developed a case of jaundice—a highly common condition in newborns resulting in the yellowing of the skin and whites of the eyes, which typically goes away without treatment within one to two weeks.

Temecia and her husband, Rodney Jackson, said they were following their midwife's care protocol for their baby's jaundice.

Dr. Anand Bhatt said the case was severe enough that they should take her to the hospital for phototherapy treatment, but the Jacksons opted to do the same phototherapy treatment for Mila in their home under Edinbyrd’s guidance.

Within days, the Jacksons say Dallas police officers and CPS agents arrived at their doorstep at around 5 a.m., informing the family that their pediatrician had reported them and demanding that they turn her over. The officers eventually left their home when the Jacksons refused—only to return hours later and tell the family that Mila was legally in the custody of Dallas CPS. The Jacksons again refused to turn over their newborn and instead reached out to their midwife for help. “Our midwife then reached out to the pediatrician, just letting him know that he had traumatized us, that we were woken up by police banging our door at 4 a.m., 5 a.m. Then after she gave him all the credentials he’d requested from her, he pretty much said he was going to leave our care and our midwife teams,” Temecia said at a Thursday press conference organized by the Afiya Center.

Over the next few days, everything seemed fine. But last Tuesday, as Rodney was walking the family’s dog outside their house, the police returned. He refused to surrender the baby when they confronted him, so they placed him under arrest, seized his keys, and used them to enter his home. There, officers took Mila from Temecia while she was alone.

"When they came in and took her from me, I requested that I needed to see the paperwork. They insisted, 'No, give her first, give her first,'" Temecia Jackson said at the press conference. "So they took her from my arms and they gave me paperwork. When they left, I looked at the paperwork and the paperwork had another mother's name on it."

Temecia claims the warrant that the Desoto Police Department and CPS agents used to take Mila didn’t even list her own name, instead listing [Mila’s] mother as another woman who’s previously had run-ins with CPS. The Jacksons still don’t even have Mila’s birth certificate because she wasn’t born in a hospital.

“Instantly, I felt like they had stolen my baby as I had a home birth and they are trying to say that my baby belonged to this other woman,” the mom continued, holding back tears. “I did not know where to turn. They had taken my husband from me and then took my daughter from me and I was left by myself.”

Temecia Jackson says her husband was not initially listed on the warrant. Later, she says the document was updated to list Rodney Jackson as the “alleged father."

Mila remains in Dallas CPS custody and under the care of a foster family. The couple's hearing with the Dallas County's juvenile board was originally scheduled for April 6. That morning, the couple says the hearing was abruptly postponed until April 20.

The Jacksons say they have been allowed only a few supervised visits with their daughter, which they say have taken place at CPS offices and in the presence of police officers.

During the press conference, the couple said they "feel like criminals" during their visits, and claim their attempts to deliver breast milk to their newborn daughter have been denied.

The couple told reporters that at their latest visit on Wednesday, they noticed Mila had developed some irritation in and around her genitals. When they raised this to CPS workers, they were told the foster family would handle this, and they weren’t permitted to take Mila to get care. “With the foster parents is where this build-up and irritation [in Mila’s genitals] occurred, and yet you’re sending her back to the same foster family. We just feel helpless in this situation as we wait,” Temecia said. She and Rodney are already missing a critical postpartum period for parental bonding—now, they also have to worry about whether she’s safe in the care of strangers.

According to one 2016 academic study, 53% of Black children experience child welfare investigations before their 18th birthday, compared to 28% of white children. Once in custody, research shows Black children are less likely than white children to be placed with a family member or ever returned to their families.

From 2019 to 2020, more people of color chose to give birth outside a hospital setting, according to a 2022 report released by the National Partnership for Women and Families (NPWF), a nonpartisan and nonprofit advocacy organization that works on public policies and education about women and families.

The increase was greatest among Black parents (30%), followed by Indigenous (26%) and Latinx (24%) parents — likely a response to "the higher risk of maternal mortality and morbidity they face and the impact of discrimination and structural racism in hospitals that result in lower-quality care," the report said.

Black people are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Texas, at least 118 women died and nearly 200 children were left without a mother in 2019, according the state's 2022 Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee's biennial report.

Discrimination contributed to 12% of pregnancy-related deaths in 2019, according to the same report.

As of Thursday, the infant remains in the custody of Dallas Child Protective Services in what the Jacksons and their advocates at the Dallas-based, Black-women-led birth and reproductive justice organization The Afiya Center have likened to a “kidnapping.”

"What did happen was misogyny. What did happen is white patriarchy. The intentional denial of Dr. Cheryl's ability to birth — that happened," Jones said. "The same thing that happened last week happened after Reconstruction with Black granny midwives — that happened. The removal of Black people's ability to take care of Black people — that happened."

D’Adra Willis, a birth justice coordinator at the Afiya Center, told Jezebel that the Jacksons’ experience is part of a broader issue with the racist over-policing of Black families by law enforcement and child welfare system. “It’s a prime example of over-policing of Black children, Black families, Black women, Black community workers, and also the Black midwife, who’s not being trusted of what she’s capable of doing when she’s licensed and certified to do so,” Willis said.

“It would not be going this way if they were a white family,” Qiana Lewis-Arnold, a birth justice associate at Afiya, told Jezebel. “Police have always been a threat to Black families. And that includes CPS, which is the family police. They treat Black people as just guilty or wrong, without an investigation, and they’ll just take action and figure it out later while we suffer through the process.”

Edinbyrd, the Jacksons’ midwife, was also present at the Jacksons’ Thursday press conference and has continued to support the family as they await their rescheduled hearing in two weeks. “This child was being nurtured. This child was being supported. And this child was being loved. And this child was kidnapped,” Edinbyrd said. “Mila needs to be returned home.”

I cannot imagine the pain and trauma Temecia must be experiencing, and the fear she feels not knowing what is happening with her daughter and when she will be returned to her.

And now the hearing to decide if this abducted baby will be returned has been pushed back to April 20th, at which time Mila, who was taken at only a few days old, will have spent the majority of her life being kept from her family.