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‘Bring Mila home’: Supporters rally for North Texas parents whose baby was taken after a hospital visit

A woman holds a sign that says "Bring Mila Jackson home!!!" in pink lettering.
Toluwani Osibamowo
/
KERA
Protestors gathered outside the Dallas office of the Department of Family and Protective Services on April 13, 2023 while Temecia and Rodney Jackson visited their daughter Mila inside. The newborn has been in the custody of Child Protective Services for roughly two weeks.

Temecia and Rodney Jackson say their newborn daughter Mila was wrongfully taken into Child Protective Services custody days after she was born. Local reproductive rights activists are demanding Mila's return.

"Bring Mila home."

The chant rang out through the parking lot of the Department of Family and Protective Services office in Dallas Thursday as Temecia and Rodney Jackson visited their newborn daughter Mila, who just weeks earlier was taken by Child Protective Services.

Mila was born at home under the care of a midwife and later taken from the Jacksons after a routine postpartum hospital visit, during which the newborn was diagnosed with jaundice, according to family statements and court documents.

Local advocates with The Afiya Center, a nonprofit supporting Black reproductive rights, held the protest Thursday afternoon in hopes of convincing the state to give the Jacksons custody of their daughter after they say she was wrongfully taken away.

"This baby, who was born to a family who invested their money and their time into hiring a licensed midwife to have a legal and safe home birth in a state where home birth is legal — they are being punished because this family chose to act on their rights and use their midwife to continue their baby's health care," Qiana Lewis-Arnold, birth justice associate with the Afiya Center, said Thursday.

The Jacksons delivered Mila with the help of a midwife about two weeks ago and got a check-up from the family's pediatrician three days later. That’s when the family heard the jaundice diagnosis.

Severe cases of jaundice, left untreated, pose a risk of brain damage, according to the Mayo Clinic.

A doctor with Baylor Scott and White advised they return to the hospital to treat Mila's condition. But the Jacksons decided to care for Mila at home with their midwife.

Concerned the family and midwife wouldn’t perform the recommended phototherapy treatment correctly, the doctor — Anand Bhatt — threatened to alert CPS if they did not admit the newborn to the hospital.

The Jacksons didn’t. Bhatt, in his letter to DFPS, called the family “very loving” and said “they care dearly about their baby,” but said their “distrust for medical care and guidance has led them to make a decision for the baby to refuse a simple treatment that can prevent brain damage."

After numerous encounters with CPS and local law enforcement, Rodney Jackson was arrested and the family was forced to surrender Mila.

Temecia and Rodney Jackson speak to protestors outside the Department of Family and Protective Services building in Dallas April 13, 2023. They say their newborn daughter Mila was wrongfully taken by Child Protective Services days after a postpartum doctor's visit.
Toluwani Osibamowo
/
KERA
Temecia and Rodney Jackson speak to protestors outside the Department of Family and Protective Services building in Dallas April 13, 2023. They say their newborn daughter Mila was wrongfully taken by Child Protective Services days after a postpartum doctor's visit.

Cerita Burrell, director of programs for The Afiya Center, said the Jacksons' midwife reached out to the nonprofit for help in getting Mila back in their custody.

Burrell said this is no isolated case among Black families.

"Families should have the options to birth the way that they want to, seek the type of medical care for their kids that they want, and to simply just raise their kids in the way in which they best see fit," she said. "And any restrictions of that is just simply a violation of our fundamental rights.”

In fact, a 2017 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that more than half of all Black children experience some form of CPS investigation by age 18.

The affidavit used to support Mila's removal from the home also had the wrong parents' names on it, according to a KERA News review. A spokesperson with DFPS said the mistake has since been corrected.

“It is always our goal to reunite children with their families,” the spokesperson, Tiffani Butler, wrote in an email to KERA News. “It is up to the court to decide when that will happen.”

The criminal and CPS history of a woman incorrectly listed as the child’s mother was also used in the affidavit to argue for Mila’s removal.

Protestors rallied around the Jacksons after they exited the Dallas DFPS building Thursday. Temecia Jackson, holding back tears, did not address the crowd. But her husband Rodney told supporters the journey is far from over.

"It's a lot of other babies that's going through this. Whether they're white, Black or brown, the color don't even matter," Jackson said. "It's too many kids that's going through this system that's just being stripped away from good families."

Got a tip? Email Toluwani Osibamowo at tosibamowo@kera.org. You can follow Toluwani on Twitter @tosibamowo.

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Toluwani Osibamowo is a general assignments reporter for KERA. She previously worked as a news intern for Texas Tech Public Media and copy editor for Texas Tech University’s student newspaper, The Daily Toreador, before graduating with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. She is originally from Plano.