Pregnancy Justice Applauds Letter from House Democrats Urging Informed Consent to Drug Test Pregnant People

NEW YORK — Today, eight House Democrats sent a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) urging them to adopt standards to require informed consent from all pregnant people before drug screenings are performed. This letter was co-led by Reps. Jerry Nadler (NY-12), Joyce Beatty (OH-3), and Nikema Williams (GA-5) and co-signed by Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ-12), Nanette Diaz Barragan (CA-44), Shontel Brown (OH-11), Diana DeGette (CO-1), and Jan Schakowsky (IL-9).

The letter follows a similar letter that Pregnancy Justice submitted to CMS in response to the proposed calendar year 2025 Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System. In that proposed rule, CMS included conditions of participation related to maternal and obstetric care for the first time. In addition to Pregnancy Justice, the House Democrats’ letter was endorsed by Physicians for Reproductive Health, All* Above All, and the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Pregnancy Justice, in its letter to CMS, calls on the office to issue guidance to medical providers on how to obtain informed consent for drug screenings during the prenatal period and during labor and delivery, and to prohibit any such testing without informed consent. Our letter also urges CMS to improve the requirements for training providers on substance use disorder (SUD) during pregnancy.

Our recent report, Pregnancy as a Crime, documents a historic 210 pregnancy-related prosecutions during the first year post-Dobbs. The majority of these charges involved substance use during pregnancy, and in 133 cases, substance use was the only allegation made against the defendant. In 121 of the 210 prosecutions, information obtained in a medical setting was used in the cases.

Given this sobering fact, Pregnancy Justice believes that CMS should affirmatively include language requiring informed consent for drug testing and SUD training for all health care providers in their maternal and obstetrics conditions of participation.

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Pregnancy Justice works to ensure that no one loses their rights because of pregnancy or because of their capacity for pregnancy, focusing on pregnant people who are most at risk of state control and criminalization: those who are low-income, of color, or use drugs.