The tragic death of a child highlights the urgent need for child protection reform

Amia Bickerstaff died Tuesday, blackened, blistered and innocent, in the University of Kansas burn unit. She was 18 months old.

Amia is the third Bickerstaff child to die in a rear-end crash that police described as 105 mph that set two cars on fire and killed another man. One of these children, Amilia, was 11 days old. The other, Amiliana, was five years old. Like the 70-year-old Iowa man, they were too broken and burned to go to the hospital, but all three were also innocent.

Her mother, the driver, is also in the burn unit in Kansas. Rachel Bickerstaff is lucky her own blood didn’t catch fire – the alcohol content was 0.0216, almost three times the legal limit. The nurses who cared for Rachel and Amia in Omaha described the little girl’s desperate fight for life as “haunting.”

This isn’t the first time Rachel’s drinking has caused an accident. She was convicted of drunk driving after an accident in 2020. She paid an $800 fine and was on probation for six months with a drunk-driving safety lock. She had a 1-year-old child at the time.

It’s also not the first time a reasonable observer has questioned whether she is a fit mother. Before her DUI conviction, four other children were taken away from her by the state of Nebraska. Details of what happened to these children are still emerging.

Across the country, the lives of our youngest children are at the heart of our politics. In Missouri and Nebraska, abortion laws will be voted on in a few weeks. Kamala Harris has made abortion rights a centerpiece of her campaign, while Republicans condemn her Vice President Tim Walz for allowing children born after botched abortions in Minnesota to die. Eight of them.

I have strong opinions on all of these issues, but I hope that when the dust settles, we can come together and do something about the way older children’s lives are being thrown away here in the little corner of the Midwest that we have becomes. We are so proud to call home.

One doesn’t have to look far back or look far to find the egregious deaths of children at the hands of people who are supposed to care for them:

• In 2023, Iowa paid $10 million to the siblings of a 16-year-old who died of malnutrition in foster care, weighing just 56 pounds, after determining the blame lay with his adoptive parents.

• In Missouri, 2-year-old Jozi Woodall died under mysterious circumstances in August after living in a nursing home whose walls were covered in feces.

• In 2023, 11 children died in foster care in Kansas.

• In July, a foster mother in Nebraska was arrested in connection with the death of a 5-year-old boy she was supposed to be caring for. The year before, more than 20 children died in state care.

These preventable deaths occur so frequently across the country that they do not make national headlines. Many die as a result of parental neglect and abuse, but they are much more likely to die in the care of non-family members. Children in foster care are far more likely to die than children who are adopted or live with their parents. Hundreds die in custody across the country every year.

Amia Bickerstaff died at the hands of her drunken mother who should never have had custody of her innocent life. This November, let us wage our fight against abortion, but when it is over, we should broaden our focus and think about saving the lives that we all agree are also valuable.

David Mastio, former USA Today editor and columnist, is regional editor for The middle place and a regular Star Opinion correspondent. Follow him on X: @DavidMastio or send him an email at [email protected]