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Foster care bill could allow for faster termination of parental rights - North Carolina Health News <br />https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2019/08/27/foster-care-bill-allows-faster-parental-rights-termination/[8/28/2019 9:53:12 AM] <br />By the time she was 20, Lankford had lived hard. Her adolescence, in particular, had been <br />hard. First came a divorce between parents who couldn’t be in the same room without fighting. <br />She was separated from her mother because of her mother’s mental illness. Later, she was <br />removed from her father’s custody after stepbrothers molested her. <br />By the time she was 20, she had spent years strung out on a combination of drugs, but mostly <br />opiates. She was living out of her car, abandoned by her boyfriend, who was also her drug <br />dealer. <br />By the time she was 20, she was seven months pregnant, too far along to have an abortion. <br />She had felony charges against her for embezzling from her employer. Every member of her <br />family was angry with her. By her own account she was miserable to be around. She was <br />waiting for a referral to get into a drug treatment program and determined to give up that baby <br />for adoption. <br />Then, she went to a prenatal appointment at the Orange County Health Department, where she <br />had her first ultrasound. <br />“When I looked at the screen, there was this perfect little girl and she was doing her kissy face, <br />she had 10 fingers and 10 toes and she was perfect,” Lankford recalls. “I walked out that <br />hospital that day and I was having a baby and I was keeping her and I really needed to get <br />help. I needed to do what I needed to do to be right and have this kid.” <br />But a new bill that’s been making its way through the General Assembly could affect women <br />like Lankford. At issue is the tussle between the rights of children who have troubled parents to <br />live less chaotic lives, in foster care, or with perhaps adoptive parents, and the rights of birth <br />parents to take the time to get their lives in order, to win back their rights to raise those <br />children. <br />Years in limbo <br />It’s a brutal balance to strike. Currently, it can take years for a baby born to mothers using <br />illegal substances to become eligible for adoption. Children living with a substance abusing