PART ONE OF TWO
Spero wrote: Holly, sorry to break it to you but there is a reason that the right to a private life is recognised and protected as a fundamental human right. ...
But that doesn't matter for a baby does it? Because you wouldn't accord that child any separate humanity would you? The baby only exists as a possession of the mother, you concern yourself only with her 'rights' - you don't give a flying fuck about the children in these cases.
You are sorry? I give flying? I'll let it go, but sarcasm, if that is what it is, is unwelcome. The acerb falls flat.
Now, in fact I care greatly, and especially for the right to a private AND family life, they go together. Let us examine the facts here:
Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights
Right to respect for private and family life
- Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
- There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
Yes, that ECHR which Britain wrote more of than any other country and now flouts more of than almost all EU countries.
A baby is entitled to her private and family life. That means she should be with her mother if both are alive unless one of the exceptions in Article 8 applies.
First exception. National security and public safety, well yes, if the mother is into Molotov cocktail raids or similar perhaps. That kind of behaviour will lead to criminal conviction of the mother and both mother and baby lose family life together.
Next Economic well-being of the country. I suppose British Social Services takes the view that seizing the babies of an impoverished mother to be unconsentually adopted into middle class and wealthy families is OK? I propose that the economic benefit to the country is too weak to justify on that basis and all other EU countries agree. This British outrage of seizing babies for no more reason than the poverty of the mother has to stop. Instead mothers should be helped with their poverty, not punished for it.
Prevention of disorder and crime? Get real! Mothers who hold ill will towards their babies do deserve to lose them. Including paedophiles and sadists. Those are not the kind of mothers who emigrate to avoid injustice from toxic Local Authorities.
And so we come to the health exception, so gleefully embraced by mental health professionals and the SS. Well, it is greatly misunderstood and dreadfully abused is that medical exception. It applies only to the PROTECTION of health. It does NOT apply to the remedy of ill health and it does not apply to the promotion of good health. I submit that the British psychiatrists and SS have overreached and gone beyond PROTECTION. Far far beyond. Certainly if the mother has a dangerous contagious illness it is appropriate to dissolve the family temporarily, I truly can't see any mother objecting to that. Other than that health is (should be under ECHR Art.8) limited to stopping the baby's health from deterioration. Thus it does not include situations where the baby's health is bad but it is not getting any worse. It does NOT include mothers who cannot provide sufficiently for reasons of poverty or for reasons of the mother's ill health, or the mother being incapacitated but stable, or on psychoactive drugs (both illegal recreational drugs and the more damaging psychoactive drugs that psychiatrists prescribe) or for having to share housing with undesirables. Unless of course it rises to the level of a criminal conviction.