Oregon mother Heather Hobbs believes she was targeted with a politically motivated report to Child Protective Services (CPS) due to her pro-life beliefs.
Hobbs, a pro-life advocate who spoke at a recent pro-Trump rally, was targeted with a CPS report that she says was politically motivated.
On Aug. 26, Hobbs went into OHSU Hospital in Portland for thyroid surgery. She said that two days later she encountered a nurse who objected to her beliefs.
“My oldest child came up to me to give me a hug in the bed. She said, ‘Mommy I love you! I want to be a prolife speaker one day too.’ I expressed that I loved her as well and said, ‘I thought you wanted to be an OBGYN?. She said, ‘“ I want to be both!’” I replied, ‘We could always use more prolife doctors.’ During this time my husband was watching a Ben Shapiro video on his phone while my other children watched a cartoon and the youngest was nursing (age 18 months),” Hobbs told The Epoch Times.
“Nurse C turned to me and said with an annoyed tone: ‘So you’re prolife?’ I smiled and gently said ‘I am now but wasn’t always. I was raised in a more liberal atheist prochoice home, but it wasn’t until my first child that I ever had to really contemplate my beliefs. She changed my heart, and every child after changed me a bit more. I believe abortion hurts women.’
For the rest of the day this nurse was cold, rude, and pushed the medications quickly through my IV, which was very painful, and prior to that incident, she did it slowly. I ultimately decided to pray for her that she will see the love and happiness we have as a conservative pro-life family and maybe, just maybe, it would plant a mustard seed,” Hobbs said.
Hobbs said that she also discussed President Trump with a different nurse at the hospital and gave her information about the pro-Trump #WalkAway campaign. But on Aug. 30, in a phone conversation with an employee at the hotel where her family was staying, Hobbs was confronted with alarming news, as she learned a complaint had been filed against her with CPS.
“She raised her voice to me asking why I lied to her. I was very confused and thought maybe she had the wrong person. I tried to understand, but she cut off my questions calling me a child abuser and said my family needed to leave immediately. I was trying to grasp what was happening and still really confused.
“I asked her who said this and she told me I had an open CPS case against me, which violated the contract we signed when we arrived. I started crying and asked for a manager or whoever gave her this information. She said she was going to call the social worker again in an aggressive tone and hung up on me,” Hobbs said.
Apologies
Another nurse in the hospital told Hobbs of the nurses’s determination to file the complaint.“She sat at the end of my bed and said, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t think it would go this far.’ I stopped crying, was confused yet again, and said, ‘What are you talking about?’ She said, ‘One of your nurses yesterday [the 29th] was at the nurses station trying to get everyone to call CPS on you for breastfeeding while on IV pain medicine. We all disagreed with her but she kept on going on about it so to put her at ease I called the lactation nurse and the doctors. They both said it is safe to nurse while that medicine is used for post surgical pain. I assumed it had stopped there,’” Hobbs said.
“If this ‘Nurse C’ was so concerned for my baby then why didn’t she ask me to stop breastfeeding when she was my nurse? Why didn’t she call lactation herself when she was my nurse? Why didn’t she ask the doctors who had the medicine on my chart as a breast feeding mother if it was safe? Why did she keep giving the medicine with that baby right there on my breast if she thought it would kill my baby? Did she want my baby to die? Why did she wait an entire day if it was urgent?,” Hobbs said.
A doctor at the hospital apologized profusely to Hobbs and personally wrote a letter to CPS stating: “We consulted the lactation services at OHSU to explore the safety of breastfeeding during this time period. The lactation services specialists have advised that breastfeeding in her current situation is likely safe, and our medical decision was to proceed with the current pain regimen and support her breastfeeding. I do not think there is any further evaluation necessary to explore the safety of breastfeeding while on opioid analgesics. I support Mrs. Hobbs’ current care of her children.”
Hobbes said the hospital management was apologetic and picked up the tab for Hobbs’ family’s stay at the Rood Family Pavilion.
Witnesses
Contemporaneous witnesses confirm that Hobbs related to them an account similar to what she told The Epoch Times.Hobbs was so upset that a call went out to friends who could console her. Tracey Beagle, a licensed professional counselor who had never met Hobbs, read about her situation in a Facebook group both belong to and went to the hospital to visit her. There, Hobbs told Beagle her story about what she believes was a politically motivated CPS report against her.
“I went and sat with her and she told me the story of what had happened. There were a couple different nurses who came in and took her vitals,” Beagle told The Epoch Times. “She was in the hospital, her family was visiting, her daughter was laying on her bed and talking with her, telling her how proud she was of her mom being pro-life, and saving babies. She said the nurse was off to the side, and when she found out, she said the nurse had a reaction. The nurse said something about her being pro-life and a Trump supporter,” Beagle remembers, noting that the nurse’s demeanor changed after that, according to Hobbs’ account in the hospital.
“She never had any problems with that woman before that conversation with her,” Beagle said.
Tara Boehlke, who visited Hobbs in the hospital with her teenage daughter after the incident, said that a doctor discussed the situation in her presence. Boehlke said that she gave the doctor and Hobbs some privacy, but when their conversation was over Hobbs confirmed that the doctor apologized to Hobbs for the CPS report.
“He said that he apologized to her in front of me, because I look so much like (Heather) that he assumed I was a relative,” Boehlke said. Boehlke said that Hobbs told her the full story in the hospital and made it clear that she felt she had been politically targeted.
Carol Leek, founder of Oregon Women for Trump, confirms that members of her group visited Hobbs in the hospital when they found out what happened, to make sure she was okay.
“Heather was calling me up from her hospital bed and telling me everything that was going on. She was telling me about this one nurse she had, how she started treating her totally different when she told her she was a pro-life advocate. Then she stopped coming in and taking care of her. One nurse told her that the other nurse just couldn’t deal with the fact that she was a Trump supporter,” Leek told The Epoch Times.
When asked whether their nurse had filed a CPS complaint on Hobbes, OHSU responded that federal privacy law prevented them from responding to the question.
Oregon’s DHS did not return a request for comment for this report.
Leek will visit Washington, D.C., with Oregon Women For Trump soon, and hopes that Hobbs will share her story with President Donald Trump any way she can.
