Leaving limbo

National | More kids exit foster care for permanent adoptive families, but pro-lifers hope for more | Lynn Vincent

As she trudged along a four-lane highway in Clarksville, Tenn., Torina Arnold thought about suicide. Two of her children—Rebecca, 3, and Christian, 2—walked beside her. She cradled 10-week-old Johnny in her arms. As the little family headed toward the Highway 48 Bridge, Ms. Arnold pictured the long fall from it into the Cumberland River. Then a police cruiser rolled up. When officers asked Ms. Arnold where she was going, she told them: to throw her three children off the bridge first, then make the leap herself.

That was 1994, and police were able to talk Ms. Arnold out of her desperate plan. The Tennessee Department of Child Services (DCS) immediately removed Rebecca, Christian, and Johnny from their mother's care and placed them in foster care with Barry Stokes, a Tennessee financial planner, and his wife Pamela.