Where is the line?

[AZRedhawk44]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10486452/Woman-has-child-taken-from-her-womb-by-social-services.html


Where is self-ownership, inviolate?

One would think that the dermis is a sacrosanct level of self-ownership, yes?  The State may not enter your skin and take from you against your will?

Evidently not.

Crazy as a pig in slop or not, a C-section is a dangerous, debilitating and permanently scarring procedure.  Neither the child nor the mother were in life-threatening danger.  Cutting on mama because the State thinks she is crazy during pregnancy is appalling. 

Highlights for the TL/DR; crowd:

This is set in England, and involves an Italian mother-to-be:

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is an Italian national who come to Britain in July last year to attend a training course with an airline at Stansted Airport in Essex.

She suffered a panic attack, which her relations believe was due to her failure to take regular medication for an existing bipolar condition.

She called the police, who became concerned for her well-being and took her to a hospital, which she then realised was a psychiatric facility.

She has told her lawyers that when she said she wanted to return to her hotel, she was restrained and sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

Meanwhile, Essex social services obtained a High Court order in August 2012 for the birth “to be enforced by way of caesarean section”, according to legal documents seen by this newspaper.

The woman, who says she was kept in the dark about the proceedings, says that after five weeks in the ward she was forcibly sedated. When she woke up she was told that the child had been delivered by C-section and taken into care.

Involuntary surgery ordered by a court, with no defense allowed.


Do you own your dermis?

[RoadKingLarry]

Maybe a little more extreme than the rather invasive anal search we had here recently. Same mentality brings it to us though.

[T.O.M.]

I do a lot of work in family court.  A lot of children born with drugs in their system because mom used during the pregnancy.  Still, you don't step in until afternthe child is born.  And then,  the goal is to getbthe family back together if at all safely possible.

The line?   Pole vaulted over it here, in my opinion.

[HankB]

This happens because those responsible for issuing such orders - as well as those carrying out the procedures - survive for years or decades after their victims are released.

[tokugawa]

We draw the line. They accrue as much power as they can, until they are stopped.
 It is rarely if ever a peaceful process.

[vaskidmark]

But it's for the chilllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllldrennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!

The brits are so well Socialized into beliving that The State knows what is best for them that even this, when explained properly, will be acceptable.  After all, she was alleged to be bipolar and had a panic attack and was acting all confused after waking up and finding herself in a mental hospital that she did not remember wanting to go to.  Therefore she might do something that would hurt the child.  (Let's just skip all the "rights of the unborn" discussion for now, OK?  We can come back and do that next week.)

Remember, this is where you can carry a knife (one only so long, and with a rounded safety tip, absolutely needed for your work) only if The State agrees that you have no evil intent in doing so.  And that considers saying harsh words to a pack of feral children throwing rocks through your windows is antisocial behavior.  (Just so we are clear about that, it is the saying of harsh words that is antisocial. As if there was any question about which was the antisocial behavior.)

The line was drawn in the sand a lomg time ago.  The only thing keeping the peasantry from doing something about the fact that the line was also crossed a long time ago is the concern that nobody else will follow when someone stands up and says "Enough!"  But one day someone will not only stand up and say "Enough!" but do something a bit more dramatic than stand in front of the advancing tanks.  And when that happens it will be the catalyst for everybody else and all Hell will break loose.

My immediate solution of how to prevent that is to pass a law against passing laws that allow such thinjgs to happen.  Bureaucrats, petty officials, and the legislators behind what they do who have not already stepped up to prevent a recurrance need to feel more than this displeasure of the public.  Public flogging is what I am currently thinking might be barely sufficient.

stay safe.

[Waitone]

Such nonsense will continue right up until there is push back, however you want to define it.

[Sergeant Bob]

The brits are so well Socialized into beliving that The State knows what is best for them that even this, when explained properly, will be acceptable.

stay safe.

I have several good friends in Britain, and while they are great people and would help just about anyone, they are conditioned to believe just that.

[brimic]

Under socialist medicine, your body and your health belong to the state, not the other way around.

[Ryan in Maine]

I used to think that the worst part of having a panic attack was feeling like I was dying. Now I know better.

Fing UK, man.

[tokugawa]

All modern states believe the individual is the property of the state.  They will deny this, of course- but look at what they do, not what they say.

 

[roo_ster]

No one in that chain of decision-making ought to die peacefully in bed, years in the future.

[RevDisk]

No one in that chain of decision-making ought to die peacefully in bed, years in the future.

Keep in mind, this is England. They think this is fine and we're the barbarians.

They did this to a foreign citizen. I'm not sure whether they would make any differentiation between a UK subject and a citizen from any other country. I sincerely hope the US would go ballistic (ideally in a literal rather than figurative fashion) if any foreign country did this to an American citizen. 

[Hawkmoon]

The line?   Pole vaulted over it here, in my opinion.

Roger that.

And where was the father of the (unborn) child? Did they bother to ask him if he agreed that the child should be ripped from the (unconsenting) mother's womb?

[AZRedhawk44]

Roger that.

And where was the father of the (unborn) child? Did they bother to ask him if he agreed that the child should be ripped from the (unconsenting) mother's womb?

Silly serf.  State > Women > Men.  Double-plus so in regards to reproductive rights, or the stripping thereof.

[Strings]

Where on Earth did you get the idea that a mere MAN would have any rights regarding the disposition of his child?

[SADShooter]

Where on Earth did you get the idea that a mere MAN would have any rights regarding the disposition of his child?

"You are a seed vault and ATM. Give over your sperm and cash and STFU."

[Balog]

It was pointed out to me that court orders compeeling c-sections are a thing in America too, although always as forced medical decisions for health reasons no just to snatch the baby up. Which doesn't make it right, but somewhat different in any case.

[brimic]

I sincerely hope the US would go ballistic (ideally in a literal rather than figurative fashion) if any foreign country did this to an American citizen. 

Great Britain's tree seems to thrive best with regular prunings.

[vaskidmark]

Great Britain's tree seems to thrive best with regular prunings.

When was the last time it was trimmed?

Seems to me the branches ought to look like dreadlocks by now.  (Not that 'Murica's are any better.)

stay safe.

[Regolith]

Actually, it was probably all the "trimming" that left Britain in the state it's in. Almost an entire generation of young men were wiped out in WWI, and WWII did a pretty good job on the next generation. It is no wonder they've lost their fighting spirit; they lost the majority of their citizenry that possessed it, and it wasn't passed down to the newer generations.

[vaskidmark]

Actually, it was probably all the "trimming" that left Britain in the state it's in. Almost an entire generation of young men were wiped out in WWI, and WWII did a pretty good job on the next generation. It is no wonder they've lost their fighting spirit; they lost the majority of their citizenry that possessed it, and it wasn't passed down to the newer generations.

Agreed.  And it is hard, after doing without for so long (The Great Depression was not just in America), to say "No" to a government that is handing out stuff that you have done without.    Especially in a country that was last self sufficient in what - 1500?  My mother, born before WWI, came to the USA from England in 1946 as a full-blown Roosevelt Democrat.  She got her citizenship in time to vote in 1948 and voted the straight party ticket.  Then my grandparents took her in hand - literally - and gave her a tour of places where folks depended on the government teat and where folks did what was needed to be done on their own.  It sunk in, for she was a staunch Nixon-Goldwater Republican for the rest of her life.

On the other hand, her nephew, who held the exclusive distributorship for Sony products in GB and had an income of several million Pounds per year, felt that being in the 90+% tax bracket "was only fair".  (To his credit he did use NHS care for the basic stuff, cashed the child-care supplement checks every month, and when the food supplement coupons first came out and were being given to everybody he used his to buy foie gras and truffles.)  When he visited the USA in the 1970's he expressed amazement that our poor were living like our middle class (had TVs, cars of their own, ate meat just about every day, etc.).  I'm still not sure if his attitude that the poor ought to act and live as if they were poor was not right.

stay safe.

[Blakenzy]

"The line is a dot to you!"