“Perhaps worst of all is the knowledge that this outcome was arbitrary. The decision to terminate my rights was not based upon any actualized threats to my daughters’ safety; rather, it was an automatic reaction to a timed financial incentive set at the federal level by the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA).

Under ASFA, if states want to receive the funding that allows them to finance child protective programs, agencies must either return children home, or move to terminate parental rights once a child has been in out-of-home care for 15 of the past 22 months.”