Achieving Justice for Disabled Parents and Their Children: An Abolitionist Approach

Abstract

The social uprisings following the police killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and many other people of color, elevated the concept of abolition to the forefront of people’s consciousness. Concurrently, there has been a burgeoning body of legal scholarship calling for the abolition of the carceral regime. Emergent scholarship is also beginning to recognize that abolition efforts must include the child welfare system, noting the interdependent relationship between the child welfare system and other parts of the carceral regime. Yet, despite the nascent legal scholarship concerning child welfare system abolition, parents with disabilities and their children have been mostly disregarded. This Article responds to that scholarly void. In this Article, I theorize and reimagine the role of the child welfare system in the contemporary struggle for the abolition of punitive systems of legal control and exploitation. My overarching argument is that the child welfare system functions as an unjust social institution for disabled parents and their children, and as such, we must work toward abolishing it and reimagining non-punitive supports and resources for families. To do so, first, the Article describes the child welfare system and its legal obligations, including those related to parents with disabilities and their children. Drawing on legal scholarship and social science research, it then elucidates the scope of the problem. Next, it limns the tenets of both abolition and disability justice and the ways in which these interconnecting movements, theories, and praxes advance justice for parents with disabilities through the abolition of the child welfare system. Finally, it proposes a novel anti-ableist legal and policy agenda for achieving justice for parents with disabilities and their children.