When I think of those in the 'far right' or those who are pro-life to the extreme and at all costs protect the unborn, the thing that enrages me is you want to ask every one of them, 'How many foster children are in your home now?'
Despite the best of efforts, many foster children are neither reunited with their families, nor adopted.
Many foster children have had difficulty making the transition to independent living. Several are homeless, become single parents, commit crimes, or live in poverty. They are also frequent targets of crime.
State and local government, with financial support from the federal government, should offer a program to educate and train foster children for employment and provide them with financial assistance, as needed, until they reach age 21.
As an adoptive parent myself of foster children, I have seen firsthand the glaring problems of the system currently facing this Nation.
My husband and I had five biological children but we also have been raising 23 foster children.
I thought if anyone need a leg up, it was our foster children. So, I started getting involved in education reform, and that was back in 1998. And as a result of all the reform work that I had done, people urged me to run for the Minnesota state Senate. I did, I was there for six years.
I'm not only a lawyer, I have a post doctorate degree in federal tax law from William and Mary. I work in serious scholarship and work in the United States federal tax court. My husband and I raised five kids. We've raised 23 foster children. We've applied ourselves to education reform. We started a charter school for at-risk kids.
When I was growing up, my parents took in foster children. From a young age, I learned that there are a lot of children in need.
Military brats have this toughness: they're almost like orphans or foster children; they develop little mechanisms. It sets you up to look at things a little differently.
