The Beginning of the End of Personal Sovereignty

On Wednesday December 4th, The UK Telegraph ran one of the most troubling stories I have ever read. It turns out a pregnant Italian tourist had a psychotic attack from not taking her medication for a bi-polar condition. The woman was placed in a  psychiatric hospital, and after it was determined by the Essex County Social Services the woman would not make a good mother, she was drugged and her baby was forcefully taken by Caesarian Section (and is now up for adoption). Child Taken From Womb by Social Services  The idea that the State would have this much power over a personal autonomy defies the morality of any civilized society. While it would seem acceptable in similar circumstances to take the child after it was born, the idea of surreptitiously cutting the baby out of a woman's womb is beyond belief (yes it was done in a medically accepted manner, but again it was done without advising the mother, even if her approval was not necessary!); can you imagine the mental anguish of a mother that has carried a child to near full term and awakening to discover it was surgically removed with no warning or explanation?  In Britain abortion laws are more strict  than the US, requiring a doctors approval; which is rarely denied.And as in the US, pro abortion/ pro-choice advocates base the right to abortion on the woman's right to choose  "Control over whether, when and how many children to have is crucial to control over every other aspect of a woman’s life." The Abortion Law Women Need .

With this understanding, you would think that liberal progressives would be outraged regarding the state taking over complete control of the woman's body and forcefully taking a child that the woman has chosen  to voluntarily carry, but no, there are some on the left that have become apologists for this barbarous act. In a web site  Opinion;Child Taken From Womb By Social Services. Really?  the "Liberal Democrat Voice", the writer Evan Harris attempts to mitigate this violation of a woman's body by questioning the validity of the article! Even though Harris' knowledge of the incident appears to come solely from the article, so anyone that reads the article would be just as informed as Harris, she reasons that the report is not accurate.

Evan Harris: These facts (from the below response Essex County Council) blow a hole in the allegations in the press (it is unclear exactly what allegations the writer is talking about as she has no argument with the facts of the case).

The Essex County Council response: As the mother was deemed unable to consent to that by virtue of being sectioned, then the very least you would expect is for a court order to be obtained before that major surgery was carried out.

Evan Harris: Yet this is exactly what was done. The clinical necessity and the clinical judgement of best interests would have been tested by the courts in this case. As opposed to selected facts being tested by the editor of the Sunday Telegraph.

Again, the writer has no argument with the facts of the case, only that it was supposedly done prescriptively (I say supposedly as there is a serious question as to if a court order was sufficient for such a personal intrusion). One would think that this attack on the most fundamental and basic personal sovereignty would at least warrant a court hearing, so all arguments could be aired out (the reason of course is because it would never have bee sanctioned). Add to this that Britain social services should have no domain over a non-Britain citizen or the child of a non-British citizen, where there is no evidence that the child has been made a British citizen (in these cases the child can only be made a British citizen at the discretion of the British Home Office), the incident can only be defined as a Draconian power grab over a personal autonomy by the State. Further, because the victim is an Italian citizen, this incident  has been elevated to an  international incident.

 The cause has also been raised before a judge in the High Court in Rome, which has questioned why British care proceedings had been applied to the child of an Italian citizen “habitually resident” in Italy. The Italian judge accepted, though, that the British courts had jurisdiction over the woman, who was deemed to have had no “capacity” to instruct lawyers. Child Taken From Womb by Social Services

What this  incident shows is the left's promotion of personal autonomy, articulated by the "Pro-Choice" argument, is really a shame. Apparently  "Pro-Choice" only goes as far as the State allowing one to abort a child, not to keep one. This even though one would think that the right of the State to remove a child from the womb is a far greater violation of personal sovereignty, than the "Right to Choose" to abort. As usual with the left it is simply the continued march toward a totalitarian regime.