If Edwards gets elected (God forbid) and implements his 'health care' plan, will we see things like this?
Threat to take new-born over emotional abuse - TelegraphWell, when you've got to meet a quota...A pregnant woman has been told that her baby will be taken from her at birth because she is deemed capable of "emotional abuse", even though psychiatrists treating her say there is no evidence to suggest that she will harm her child in any way.
Social services' recommendation that the baby should be taken from Fran Lyon, a 22-year-old charity worker who has five A-levels and a degree in neuroscience, was based in part on a letter from a paediatrician she has never met.
Hexham children's services, part of Northumberland County Council, said the decision had been made because Miss Lyon was likely to suffer from Munchausen's Syndrome by proxy, a condition unproven by science in which a mother will make up an illness in her child, or harm it, to draw attention to herself.
Under the plan, a doctor will hand the newborn to a social worker, provided there are no medical complications. Social services' request for an emergency protection order - these are usually granted - will be heard in secret in the family court at Hexham magistrates on the same day.
......
"The paediatrician has never met me," she said. "He is not a psychiatrist and cannot possibly make assertions about my current or future mental health. Yet his letter was the only one considered in the case conference on August 16 which lasted just 10 minutes."
Northumberland County Council insists that two highly experienced doctors - another consultant paediatrician and a medical consultant - attended the case conference.
The case adds to growing concern, highlighted in a series of articles in The Sunday Telegraph, over a huge rise in the number of babies under a year old being taken from parents. The figure was 2,000 last year, three times the number 10 years ago.
Critics say councils are taking more babies from parents to help them meet adoption "targets".
I know there's been black humor jokes about needing a license before you have kids - but this is just plain unbelieveable. She's already been condemned as an unfit parent, before the child is even born. Appeals are ongoing... but man, if this isn't a case of bureacratic overload, I don't know what is.
J.
Comments (6)
Slight rephrasing:
"They can't have my child unitl they pry my gun from my cold dead fingers."
otpu
Posted by Otpu | September 4, 2007 12:01 AM
Posted on September 4, 2007 00:01
But John - it's for both your own good and that of the child. Think of the child!
In all honesty, considering my own childhood and adolescence, I doubt I'd be considered fit as a parent by that nutcase pediatrician. But so far, the little guy ain't doing half bad...
J.
Posted by JLawson | September 4, 2007 10:21 AM
Posted on September 4, 2007 10:21
The Second Amendment isn't there just to protect us from burglars, terrorists, and foreign despots; it's also there to protect us from petty domestic tyrants like the Northumberland County Council.
Personally, I would consider the offspring of any parent who would give up their child to the state without a fight to be lucky for having been rescued.
Otpu
Posted by otpu | September 4, 2007 2:55 PM
Posted on September 4, 2007 14:55
Yet the poor 'subjects' in the UK don't have that. They're stuck with whatever their local councils decide, they have no way to fight back.
"Sorry - gotta make a quota, we're taking your kid!" would get a REAL good reception here! The media would be all over something like this, and there'd be an uproar.
You know, I used to wonder how the world of "A Clockwork Orange" managed to get to the point it did. I'm not wondering all that much any more.
But there ARE signs that folks are getting really ready to revolt.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=479146&in_page_id=1770
Wonder if anyone's warming some tar for the Council?
J.
Posted by JLawson | September 4, 2007 3:25 PM
Posted on September 4, 2007 15:25
Tar - check
feathers - check
lampposts - reserved
Northumberland County Council meeting - scheduled.
YouTube - alerted and waiting for the video.
otpu
Posted by otpu | September 4, 2007 3:32 PM
Posted on September 4, 2007 15:32
It's going to come, I think. When the justice system doesn't deliver justice, people _will_ take it into their own hands. We're reaching the point in the US, I think, where the system has become a game with a lawyer's win is more important than society's stability. We have lawyers making laws that other lawyers then find ways to outwit - in fact, it seems as if those who make the laws deliberately make them with loopholes that they themselves can later use to their benefit. This isn't the way it was supposed to be. We're way too topheavy with laws. One of the beauties of the Ten Commandments is that with only ten - actually only seven that dealt with social interactions - they covered just about all the permutations. Of course they had to be interpreted, but the basics didn't change. The more you try to define exactly what is forbidden, the more original people get in splitting the hairs so that they can get away with what is forbidden.
We need to simplify and _enforce_.
Posted by suek | September 5, 2007 11:04 AM
Posted on September 5, 2007 11:04