The State Knows Best (And It Will Take Your Children At Birth To Prove It)

I couldn't believe it when I read this story (hat-tip: Jay D, my UK resident insider):

Threat to take new-born over emotional abuse
By David Harrison, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 1:42am BST 26/08/2007


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.

From then on, anyone discussing the case, including Miss Lyon, will be deemed to be in contempt of the court.

Words escape me - I can't make this up. This goes waaaaaaayyyyy beyond the perverse collectivist, socialist concept of the Nanny State. Secret "Star Chamber"-type court proceedings, supression orders...Is this just a horrible, unthinkable nightmare? I had to read further to find the "justification" for such egregious confiscatory government pro-action:

Miss Lyon came under scrutiny because she had a mental health problem when she was 16 after being physically and emotionally abused by her father and raped by a stranger.

She suffered eating disorders and self-harm but, after therapy, graduated from Edinburgh University and now works for two mental health charities, Borderline and Personality Plus.

Dr Stella Newrith, a consultant psychiatrist, who treated Miss Lyon for her childhood trauma for a year, wrote to Northumberland social services stating: "There has never been any clinical evidence to suggest that Fran would put herself or others at risk, and there is certainly no evidence to suggest that she would put a child at risk of emotional, physical or sexual harm."

Despite this support, endorsed by other psychiatrists and Miss Lyon's GP, social services based their recommendation partly on a letter from Dr Martin Ward Platt, a consultant paediatrician, who was unable to attend the meeting.

He wrote: "Even in the absence of a psychological assessment, if the professionals were concerned on the evidence available that Miss Holton (as Miss Lyon was briefly known), probably does fabricate or induce illness, there would be no option but the precautionary principle of taking the baby into foster care at birth, pending a post-natal forensic psychological assessment."

The council said the recommendation would be subject to further assessment and review. "When making such difficult decisions, safeguarding children is our foremost priority," a spokesman said.

We, as free people, now have to worry about a government punishing us prior to a perceived threat (in this case, taking our unborn children because of what we might do or may be likely to do) based on vague and possibly erroneous information (but, hey, as long as it comes from "professionals," who are we to question?) having to prove our innocence, unable to face our accuser(s) and challenge a decision before the fact? (Lefties, spare me any analogies to Guantanamo Bay; it's neither similar nor relevant). I never saw it, but isn't that what the Tom Cruise film, "Minority Report," was about? What is wrong with us as human beings, specifically, in this case, the people of the UK? They should be storming the ivory towers of these elitist autocrats, Bastille Day-style, dragging the verminous slime on their bellies to Picadilly Circus to be hung, drawn, and quartered! We have, as a people, become so desensitized that we will put up with this type of perverted, upside-down legislation and abdicate our freewill with smiles on our faces. We are a sad lot, my friends, and we deserve nothing better than that which we tolerate - which is, apparently, just about anything as long as The State does what it tells us is best for us. Afterall, The State knows best.

This is Big Brother coming of age. Books that I read as a teen and a young man - Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty Four," Huxley's "Brave New World," and Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange" - are coming true right before my eyes. Those men, modern-day prophets and visionaries, really could see the future. Their novels, intended as warnings of totalitarian control by central government and authority in direct conflict with - and indeed, in violation of - individual self-determination and the freewill of the human spirit, have, it seems to me, become a guidebook for those who rule with impunity.

And this leads perfectly right into the post below...