Recently I agreed to help Amy Philo with her work online to defeat The Mothers Act in Congress.
Inspired by her wonderful you tube video, I decided to make one of my own.
Here is the video created this morning at One True Media.

And the you tube version:

Jenny Hatch

The Natural Family BLOG
The Natural Family Company
“Healthy Families Make A Healthy World!”

Amys video:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For easier reading of Amys Article go to the PDF version hosted on her blog I don’t have the gumption to format it.
Sanders Turns Blind Eye To Victims, Sponsoring Deadly MOTHERS Act
by Amy Philo, 214-705-0169, 817-793-8028
amy@uniteforlife.org
MEDIA ADVISORY –August 7, 2008 – The Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Act, a
bill to institute nationwide screening and “treatment” of expectant and new mothers at
risk for depression, anxiety, and other “mental illness,” has been pushed by pharmabacked
groups for the past several years with little success until recent months. Countless
millions of dollars are already being spent each year marketing drugs to women of
childbearing age, and an astounding one third of all pregnant women in the U.S. take
psychotropic drugs according to the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
But pharmaceutical companies are apparently not happy with their current recordbreaking
profits. When advertising returns diminish and black box warnings for suicide
threaten to scare off potential customers, government mandates can sure come in handy.
Senator Bernard Sanders (I-VT) is one man co-sponsoring The MOTHERS Act. (See his
recent PAC contributions here. They include tens of thousands of dollars from various
groups such as a PAC for “advancing psychology,” “New Jersey First,” and numerous
other questionable donations that could alone explain his co-sponsorship of this bill.) An
email sent by Senator Sanders’ office responding to opposition against the bill stated that
The MOTHERS Act has nothing to do with medication. When asked for a comment,
Sanders’ press secretary on behalf of the Senator guaranteed that no women would be
forced to take psychiatric drugs as a result of the legislation, should it pass.
Who will put their faith in Senator Sanders’ assessment of a bill that he co-sponsors quite
possibly only because of who contributes to his reelection campaigns? Should the public
ignore the fact that a diagnosis of depression, or being “at risk” for depression in the large
majority of cases results in a prescription for antidepressants, which then lead to
psychosis, homicidal and suicidal ideation and subsequent force drugging with more
antidepressants, anti-psychotics, anti-anxiety drugs, as well as electroshock? Or are we
supposed to just relax and trust that if Bernard Sanders says so, passing The MOTHERS
Act would not increase the disastrous practices of doctors and others in the mental
“health” field?
Rather than face the deception of pharmaceutical companies in promoting antidepressants
and anti-psychotics as protective against suicide, the sponsors of The MOTHERS Act
continue to turn a blind eye. In addition to suicide and homicide, documented deadly
risks of antidepressants include preterm birth, spontaneous abortion, stillbirth, cardiac
birth defects, pulmonary hypertension, and fatal birth defects, among others. Because
these dangers are undeniable, the financially conflicted proponents of The MOTHERS
Act now make desperate attempts to distract from the central goal of the legislation and
to appear unbiased and even holistic.
You decide, which is worse – the preemptive and arrogant denial of deaths, serious
trauma and emotional suffering that this legislation would bring about for millions of
families, or the promotion of these outcomes by some of the most outspoken medication
advocates pushing for the bill? And how does Bernard Sanders justify his claim that more
women will not be forced when compulsory drugging is already an everyday occurrence
in this country? Why pass a bill to screen the nation’s mothers and get them into
treatment at all, when women already have the freedom to seek “help?”
In 1988 Jenny Hatch was placed in a Michigan state mental institution for postpartum
psychosis and drugged with Haldol. She stayed there for nine days until she could be
transferred to a private hospital, where she says she fought back with the staff on the
medication issue for two weeks. Ultimately the private hospital sent Jenny back to the
state hospital and she fought medications for six more days, telling everyone that she was
breastfeeding a baby and could not take their drugs. A judge then ordered “90 days
additional incarceration in the hospital and forced meds.”
She was sent back to a private hospital where they forced Lithium, Stelazine, and Prozac. When she became extremely suicidal on Prozac, the Stelazine was withdrawn and the Prozac was doubled. Ultimately after finally leaving the hospital, Jenny located a doctor who helped her wean off all medications over a six-month period. She also followed up by beginning a full body
detoxification and then went on to have four more children, fortunately with zero psychiatric pills to follow.
Over the last 18 years Jenny has advocated against forced drugging and her story has
been publicized in various magazines and books. But for psychiatry, old habits die hard.
In a recent blog entry, Jenny wrote about two women who had contacted her who had a
history of psychosis and were told that if they ever had any more children, they would be
ordered to take antipsychotic drugs for two full years following the births in order to
“prevent” PPP.
Similarly, New Jersey’s “MOTHERS Law,” passed in 2006, has already
resulted in mothers being forcibly taken to the hospital by police simply for mentioning
to their doctors they were depressed or calling a PPD hotline. Force is certainly nothing
new in psychiatry, and in fact it has been central to the field for its entire history. It seems
that the drug pushers care only about maintaining income at all costs. Those caught by
psychiatry cannot be called patients at all but rather, victims.
In 2004 my firstborn, three-day-old son nearly died from choking while trying to vomit
formula at Children’s Hospital. We had only arrived at the hospital a few minutes before
he choked, and when they sent us home the next day, the trauma of nearly losing my son
hit me hard in the form of a panic attack. I was told that having had a panic attack meant I
would get severe PPD and should take drugs to “prevent” that from happening. I took
Zoloft for only three days before hallucinating murdering Isaac when he was only nine
days old. When I sought help at the hospital I was involuntarily incarcerated and forced
to swallow more Zoloft despite my suspicions about the drug. They did let me go home
eventually, when I faked being stable on the meds because I could not handle the forced
separation from my baby and my family. For months I waited for the drug to work and
even took higher and higher doses, which resulted in the homicidal obsessions
progressing from frequent to constant and being focused on my mother, husband, cats
and neighbors in addition to my baby. The higher the dose I took, the less I felt disturbed
by these thoughts, and these constant ideas of homicide were followed by thoughts of
suicide to protect my son from me. I stopped taking Zoloft after giving it five months to
“start working,” and “miraculously” my intense obsession with murdering my son and
my family and committing suicide disappeared within a few weeks of my last pill. I
survived psychiatric treatment, but that is more than we can say for Melanie Stokes, who
went through four hospitalizations and four series of drug cocktails as well as
electroshock before her suicide.
Which brings us to the infamous “non-profit” group, Postpartum “Support” International,
who claims to be the lead sponsor of The MOTHERS Act, while also maintaining that
they have no interest in seeing pharmaceutical companies do well. This group has put
countless women in danger by pushing drugs with absolutely no remorse and no mention
of the risks, and it has dishonored Melanie Stokes by doing so much of this in her name.
PSI also pushes government agencies and the private sector to advertise depression in
print and on TV so that women will “admit” their depression and seek “help.” The group
espouses the idea that the universal mental screening proposed by The MOTHERS Act is
justifiable because too many women apparently do not realize they are depressed and
need a screening to tell them so.
Despite being a “non-profit,” the organization consists of numerous mental health
professionals who directly benefit from increased diagnosis and drugging of mothers.
They also will be eligible to receive grants to carry out enforcement of the nationwide
detection of women considered at risk of mental illness, should The MOTHERS Act
pass, and they even have these enforcers ready and waiting to start their surveillance as
soon as the bill becomes law (or as they hope it will).
So we’re supposed to trade our freedom and our lives for this bill, and accept that women
who do not feel depressed can trust a quiz to tell them that they are so depressed that they
can’t live without “treatment?”
(Mental Illnesses: The Only ‘Diseases’ Spread Through Pop Quizzes)
Shari Lusskin M.D., who is a long-time member of the advisory board of Postpartum
Support International (PSI) and a professor of “reproductive” psychiatry at NYU,
discussed PTSD in new mothers for a recent Wall Street Journal article written by Rachel
Zimmerman. The article promoted diagnoses of mental illness for women who go
through traumatic childbirth, as well as prevention of “PTSD” via the use of drugs like
Zoloft during pregnancy. With this new push to redefine aftershock from trauma as a
disease, any woman having an emergency c-section, or any woman whose baby has a
life-threatening complication, or any woman whose baby’s heart rate drops during labor,
or any woman giving birth to a dead baby could be classified as mentally ill rather than
deemed to be reacting normally to an emergency surgery or the death or threat of death to
her own baby.
In this Wall Street Journal PTSD article Lusskin said that mothers who experience
Lusskin placed this photo next to her
disclosure of conflicts of interest as a
paid speaker for four pharmaceutical
companies.
traumatic births should not jump to the conclusion that they will get PTSD. This
statement is highly ironic considering her employment as a speaker for Wyeth,
AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and GlaxoSmithKline. In a separate presentation made to mental
health “professionals” Lusskin promoted a range of psychotropic medications and even
electroshock for use by pregnant and nursing mothers.
In the same article, Susan Stone, the immediate past
president of PSI, discussed The MOTHERS Act,
stating that “the law’s intent is to provide ‘effective’
care, whether it’s talk therapy, medications or some
combination, to suffering mothers.”
I find this article absurd considering that with the push
to prevent depression and PTSD by drugging women
before they give birth, more babies will die or be born
with life-threatening complications. More babies will
suffer drops in heart rate as the drugs given to their
mothers for labor interact with those given to them for
depression or prevention of PTSD, causing more
traumatic emergency c-sections and stillbirths. And
more women who lose their babies as a result of
preemptive drugging will become severely depressed
and doctors will try to drug away their grief. So much
for treating or preventing PTSD.
Considering the fact that PSI recently sponsored an
event to push drugs on anxious women called “Beyond The Blues,” cosponsored by
AstraZeneca, it is more apparent why The MOTHERS Act mentions medications and
biological agents and not simply antidepressants. Because we wouldn’t want to rule out
the government-sponsored drugging of women with drugs given for anxiety and panic
attacks.
Zimmerman’s timing in publishing this PTSD promo article is impeccable. The PTSD
marketing all ties in quite neatly with the next big epidemic. Perhaps if antidepressants
cannot be shown to help depression, drug companies can resort to marketing them for
numbing the effects of PTSD, as the patients taking them become psychotic and no
longer show any remorse, regret, or fear. In fact, the Pentagon just launched a $300
million project to study PTSD in the military. I can think of many ways that money could
be better spent for our military than by administering drugs and waiting to see their
effects. Yet many people want to do the same thing for all the nation’s mothers.
Julie Edgington, whose son Manie was born with Paxil-caused Transposition of the Great
Arteries, wrote to Rachel Zimmerman of the Wall Street Journal in protest of the
“perinatal PTSD” article. “My mission has become very difficult especially when
reporters want to demean what has happened to my son by singing the praises of
antidepressant use to help with postpartum depression. The MOTHERS Act is set up to
screen women even during pregnancy for depression and the only listed treatment is
biochemical. What does this mean? It means this world better get ready for many many
more babies to be born like my son if this act is passed. Paxil is now a Class D drug yet
GSK continues to tell women to take the drug if the benefits outweigh the risk. When the
risk is serious and deadly birth defects why would they tell women to take this drug? The
same reason they want to pass the MOTHERS Act. The same reason why they said
nothing when they knew years before I became pregnant with my son that their drug
caused heart defects. They are not scared to get away with murder.”
No amount of settlement money from GlaxoSmithKline, no apology, no ban on drugs and
no prison terms for pharmaceutical employees could take away Manie’s heart defect,
resurrect all the stillborn and miscarried babies who died because of psychotropic drugs,
or turn back the clocks and hold Melanie Stokes back from the ledge of her twelfth-story
hotel window. Nothing that anyone does could remove my memory of being homicidal
toward my son and my family. But we must continue to hold accountable all those who
find preventable deaths and ruined lives to be nothing worth worrying about.
Over the past several months I have been confronted numerous times by drug apologists
slamming me for my opposition to The MOTHERS Act. In my replies I have used my
story, the FDA suicide and birth defect warnings, the irony of the way this bill dishonors
Melanie Stokes, and numerous other facts including studies documenting no benefit for
antidepressants, only tremendous harm. On more than one occasion top members of PSI
including Susan Stone and Birdie Meyer, the current President, persisted with claims that
antidepressants are generally safe and effective. Stone also wrote that in many cases of
claimed adverse effects such as a drug-induced suicide or murder, it was the “underlying
disease” and not the drug that caused the tragedy, although she said that there may be a
“small number” of people experiencing adverse events from the drugs.
Apparently the track record of this organization is not very good, considering that several
of the people who contacted me admit to numerous cases of the women they worked with
ultimately committing suicide or killing their children. Yet Stone refers to The
MOTHERS Act as a “no brainer.” Clearly the only way that this bill could end anyone’s
suffering would be via permanent relief for the depressed mother in the form of suicide or
lethal injection in prison.
Given that PSI operates internationally, perhaps they would have noticed that many
countries do not drug quite as many of their mothers as the U.S. does, and these countries
have better outcomes. Unlike the U.S.A., the U.K. has actually banned the sale of
antidepressants for children and teens due to the suicide risk. But in the U.S. PSI finds it
acceptable to drug America’s unborn and newborn babies through their mothers’ bodies.
Would this madness be tolerated in any normal society? Will the U.S. professionals’
affinity for drug-murder of families spread around the world like an infectious disease? In
Sweden, where minimal monitoring of suicide victims’ health histories is conducted,
86% of all suicides have been committed by people taking psychotropic medications.
77% of these cases involved antidepressants and neuroleptics. Most patients were taking
multiple medications at the time of death, due to the common practice of “treating” the
dangerous effects of drugs by adding more.
I suppose it would be fitting if The MOTHERS Act could be totally rewritten and really
would put a stop to the mistreatment of new mothers in a way that would honor the
untimely drug and electroshock-induced death of Melanie Stokes. But instead, it will only
perpetuate psychiatry’s death grip, expanding the magnitude of the drug-net by adding
the force of a federal mandate to the industry’s current efforts to “screen” women for
mental disorders – all without offering informed consent or alternatives to drugs. When
the Seventeen Magazine-style pop psychology quizzes inevitably tell hormonal women
that their feelings are signs of mental illness, are we supposed to believe that doctors will
not prescribe drugs? Will the federal government engage in any sort of monitoring to
determine how ineffective and deadly the program is and compare the percentage of
women killing their children in the next five years to the previous five? Will black box
warnings be given to women, or will doctors hand out samples after removing the drug
labels as was done to me? And will Bernard Sanders and all of the people voting for this
bill take responsibility for these deaths, this violence against our most vulnerable citizens,
which risks the life of every new baby born in our country?
Clearly the U.S. has already fallen below anyone’s lowest expectations for how severely
our government has betrayed its own people and offered them up as human sacrifice for
the sake of greed, yet we are facing the possibility of the passage of The MOTHERS Act,
among other nightmare legislation, with the consequence of even more intrusion,
suffering, and death.
Rock on Amy!
Jenny Hatch