Multi-Ethnic Placement Act Argumentative Essay

The Due Process Clause within the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution, and the ruling of 2000 Supreme Court case, Troxel vs. Grantville, that parenting is a fundamental right under the constitution and that the state is prohibited from intervening in family matters. Due to this reason, it is unlawful and for any state to deny imprisoned mothers equal protection under the law (Health Issues Among, Braithewaite, 300). This intrusion, however, has been made evident by the welfare, foster care, and prison system. With the introduction of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA) and the Multi-Ethnic Placement Act (MEPA). The AFSA allows the states to intervene in the private realm of family life and disrupt the relationship between mother and child based off the rule that if children are in foster care fifteen out of the twenty months allotted for the act, then parental rights will be challenged and terminated. The MEPA removes predominantly children of color in the foster care who are now in the foster care system, from their kin, and placed with white families. Incarcerated Black mothers and their children are heavily attacked on the basis of these acts, because even though they make up thirteen percent of the United States population, twenty percent of Black women, are imprisoned with long term sentences (Children of Incarcerated Parents…, Levy-Pounds, 14). Thus, the prisons and foster care system are heavily consisted of women and children from poor minority backgrounds. The research conducted will highlight that Black women and their children have always been systematically attacked and forcefully separated from each other from the period of slavery to modern day. The paper will argue …show more content…
105-89), now allowed states to avoid the unification aspect the previous, AACWA, and further separated families as the states saw