After her daughter Amelia jammed her finger, Karen Dresser rushed her to urgent care center in Maryland to see a doctor. Instead of being admitted, Dresser faced questions concerning her guardianship as staff seemingly failed to believe that the white woman was a mother to her black daughter.

“They ask me for guardianship papers,” Dresser recalled in a Facebook post. “I let them know that I don’t carry them with me. They (the clerk and her supervisor) told me I needed them for her to be seen.”

So here is the story of today: Amelia jammed her finger last night and it still hurt today so we went to Patient First. …Posted by Karen Dresser on Wednesday, September 19, 2018

According to Dresser, the situation was even more strange because Amelia had been to the clinic multiple times across a span of 12 years. Despite this, the mother and daughter were still turned away.

“At first, I was just numb. I was in disbelief, actually,” Live 5 News reported Dresser saying. “We are a family in every sense of the word, and for somebody just to make the assumption that we weren’t is hurtful.”

In shock, Dresser asked other mothers in her post if they had also been asked for proof of guardianship when visiting a clinic, to which she received a resounding ‘no.’

“By the time I was home, I had lots of people saying, ‘No, never,’” Dresser continued. “So i know it was a color issue.”

In response to the incident, Patient First released a statement saying:

“During registration, if a minor patient is accompanied by an adult who states that they are the patient’s parent, we take them at their word. If the adult states that they are the child’s guardian, we require documentation to confirm that before the patient can be registered.”

Dresser, however, claims she insisted that she was Amelia’s mother, and believes, “people out there need to understand that families come in all shapes and sizes and that it’s important to respect all families,” Live 5 News reported.

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