Emancipate NC proudly celebrates Toia Potts, who recently delivered a powerful TEDx Talk at TEDxLake Alfred. In “Motherhood Cannot Be Erased By The State,” Toia challenges the legal and social frameworks that attempt to sever the bonds between parents and their children.
In her talk, Toia speaks truth to the harm caused by the termination of parental rights, reframing it not as a legal procedure, but as a deeply human loss that cannot be erased:
“We use this phrase termination of parental rights as if motherhood were a contract. But you can’t terminate love. You can’t terminate memory. And you can’t terminate the bond a child carries in their bodies.
You can separate families, but you cannot separate the soul tie that I have with my children. Although this has been the most destabilizing event for my family, this is much bigger than just my family.
What happened to my family is not rare. One in 100 children will experience a termination of parental rights. And in 2021, as recent data shows, 65,000 parents—disproportionately Black, brown, Indigenous, low-income parents—had their parental rights terminated within one year. This happens quietly every day to families who don’t have microphones or platforms or TED stages.
I often meet parents who comply, parents who love their children. And yet these parents are told by the state that time has simply run out. Parents are left to grieve our children though they have not died.
Termination of parental rights must end. This system must be stopped. The system must stop treating family separation as a solution. The system must stop equating parental capacity to compliance, and the system must stop believing that adoption automatically heals.”
Toia’s words call on us to reimagine systems that too often criminalize poverty, punish parents, and separate families. We are honored to uplift her leadership as she continues to fight for families across North Carolina.