A Michigan judge presiding over family law cases thinks the law should change to make it tougher to terminate parental rights.

The reasons are twofold. First, the number of children who enter and remain in foster care, without families, throughout their entire childhoods, has skyrocketed in Michigan.

Second, most of these children want to be back with their biological parents.

An alternative option to termination of parental rights would be for the courts to appoint guardians for these children – unless and until they are able to be reunified with their biological parents.

This alternative would leave all options open, except possibly adoption. But the adoption option seems more of a pipedream than anything else for an enormous percentage of these children.

Read more in this Detroit News editorial: Reform state law that creates more orphans.