These Parents Had to Bond With Their Babies Over Zoom or Lose Them Forever During the pandemic, video chats replaced in-person visits between parents and their children placed in foster care. The effects could linger for years. M., 23, stands in the room she has prepared for her daughter at her home in Massachusetts in March of 2021. Since her newborn daughter was placed in foster care, M. has been forced to bond with her primarily through Zoom. Rania Matar for The Marshall Project Coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, criminal justice and immigration.
In June 2020, M., a community college student in Massachusetts, checked into the hospital with intense stomach cramps. Within hours, M., who didn’t realize she had been pregnant, unexpectedly gave birth a phenomenon doctors call “denied pregnancy.”