True Narratives: Framing Pain, Punishment, and the Lethality of Termination of Parental Rights

This essay is written in the practice of abolitionism, to disentangle controlling myths from reality that overwhelmingly stifle expansive and honest discourse around the devastating practice of terminating parental rights (TPR). This essay seeks to deepen collective political analysis, unpacking structural racism and anti-Blackness which buttress family policing law, policy, and practice. The essay adds to family policing abolition discourse through rigorous excavation of framing and narrative patterns of history and utilizing a story-based strategy amplifying the perspective of those subjected to state violence of policing families. The essay seeks to reveal the death-making nature of TPR through true narratives, arguing sustainable, positive change for families cannot occur if TPR reigns as a mainstay threat and tool for decimating familial connection, and calls for an end to the state’s ability to inflict TPR on families.