Abstract
This article has been interested in how and why liberals, and even feminists like Elizabeth Bartholet, joined the campaign against "illegitimacy" waged by neoconservatives in the 1990s as part of the effort to get rid of federal entitlements that supported single mothers. As we have seen, the 1996 Interethnic Placement Act was redefined to separate it from the previous controversy over Gingrich's remarks about orphanages, and even, ultimately, from the measure to end AFDC. It was called, instead, as legal scholar Joan Heifetz Hollinger defines it, a "law aimed at removing the barriers to permanency for the hundreds of thousands of children who are in the child protective system, and especially, for the African American and other minority children MEPA makes it clear that children in state custody are not exempt from the antidiscrimination principles embodied in . . . Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act." In the 1970s, activists had worked to remind policy makers that those "barriers" were parental rights, deserving of protection from abuse by an overreaching state system. A great deal had changed in a handful of years.
Recommended Citation
Briggs, Laura
(2009)
"Somebody's Children,"
Utah Law Review: Vol. 2009:
No.
2, Article 7.
Available at:
https://dc.law.utah.edu/ulr/vol2009/iss2/7