For all the innocent joys of impending motherhood have been denied Fran since social workers warned her four months ago that Molly would be taken away ten minutes after birth and placed with foster parents.
Fran, a third-year student doing a neuro-science degree at Edinburgh University, is, to everyone who knows her, a sociable, kind and intelligent woman. But to her local authority she is a danger to herself and her baby.
Seven years ago Fran had an eating and selfharming disorder and spent 13 months in a psychiatric hospital followed by nine successful months of counselling.
Now 22, and with her emotional troubles behind her, Fran is outraged that she should be judged a risk to herself and her child despite a fistful of medical reports that dispute this.
Last week, fearing the worst, Fran moved from her home in Hexham in Northumberland to Birmingham, where she hoped a different authority would treat her more sympathetically.
But with the birth so close, she felt she couldn’t take any risks with bureaucracy and on Wednesday, Fran took an even more drastic step. She got on a flight bound for Europe – and went into hiding. Wary of revealing her whereabouts, Fran agreed to talk about her nightmare in a lengthy telephone call to The Mail on Sunday.
Everybody has issues. Only some are liable, though.
It’s takes a socialist village to know what’s best for a baby.
“Cost to society” = socialism = actual cost to society = Socialism.
Whaddya mean, it’s circular logic?
Note to Happyfeet:
Hey, you mentioned you’re into creative opening sequences to movies & shows.. have you checked out HBO’s ROME ? Cool.. Reminds me of the sound and feel of Carnivale a bit except with Romans and moving graffiti… The story isn’t as quirky as Carnivale but that firebush Octavia is way hotter than any of the cooch dancers…
I know this is terribly old fashioned of me, but there appears to be nary a word about a father.
Perhaps if she’d bucked modern convention, and got -you know- married she wouldn’t have found herself in this situation.
I thought Rome’s credits worked, and I was excited, but then the tone didn’t match anything I saw in the first half of the first episode… I know I need to give it more of a shot. Mostly I just thought everyone looked badly in need of a shower. I’m saving it.
I don’t understand how they want to take this lady’s kids away but they were perfectly willing to let nutters like Diana and Charlie raise their kid and the bastard nazi one. I think I’m going to write a letter.
The Rome credits were, I think, an attempt to show the prominence of myth and religion in everyday Roman life. A nod to the how close to everyday life the superstitions and beliefs of Romans must have been and how real ideas like Romulus and Remus or the gorgon were.
One has to bear in mind that the sacrifice of animals was a very common practice – and indeed if one watches the first season of Rome, Titus Pullo actually attains release from captivity on three ocassions immediately after sacrificing insects or small animals!
Whilst the treatment overall is a bit “Dynasty”, I really do think that the production portays a very self consistent feeling world.
I thoroughly enjoyed both seasons and would recommend staying with it….
Carin
evidently the sperm donor did something worthy of police attention
While she made a poor choice on who to schtup, I applaud the fact her first instinct wasn’t to evacuate her womb of the growing non-entity.
Carin
Our Parliament here in the UK is currently debating removing language from Fertilisation and Embryology legislation that defines the need for a Father or the presence of a Father in a childs life (after insemination).
We are on a path that puts the desire for children of lesbian couples above the natural order and above the needs of the child.
The message we seem to be sending is “Father Not Wanted On Voyage”, because of course it is apparently now accepted that men are “evil” and irrelevant to the parenting process.
I believe it was Patty or Selma who said to Marge Simpson:
“You’ve got the kids, when you’ve planted the seeds, you throw away the envelope”
You can get a good idea of how we treat fathers here in the UK from :
TEXT HERE
I’m gonna go back to it. I took the Rome credits to be setting up more of a blurring of myth and reality, which I wasn’t feeling in what little I saw. Speaking of blurring kind of, if you missed Wonderfalls, it’s kind of brilliant in it’s own way.
Rome is definitely worth sticking with. It gets much better, and bawdier, as the story progresses. Highlights include the opium den depravities of Cleopatra’s boudoir, Lindsay Duncan doing her ashes and wailing routine, and, of course, the magnificently evil Atia, forever plotting, scheming and brushing her hair, or having unruly domestics flogged while idly chomping on grapes. She’s an inspiration to us all.
I bailed on The Wire at about the same time. Maybe it was a mood thing.
It amazes me watching the West do this to itself. Pointing out that Enlightenment thinking is a particular construct is one thing; taking that observation and using it as a bludgeon to kill the very construct responsible for Western advancement in the name of a kind of social “progress” that is anything but — and is, in fact, an almost willful attempt to subvert convention for its own sake, under the guise of progressivist social engineering — is another thing entirely.
It’s cultural suicide — only in this scenario, it’s a suicide against both sets of conjoined twins committed by just one, who believes she’s doing the right thing for the both of them.
Or something like that. I’m still playing with the analogy.
And these are the people and the systems that the Left would have us looking to for guidance.
Well, Tom Cruise ate my afterbirth. I hope that helps.
I get confused easily so I plan on moving to San Fran so I can get me one of them genderless ID cards. If’n I have one of them can they kick me out of women’s locker room at the gym?
What’s that in her throat? No frog-in-blender jokes, please.
“selfharming disorder”
Is that the same thing as saying ‘that chick is crazy!’?
Or does it just mean ‘I smoke’ or ‘I drink’ or something? Because if she is or ever was a fan of cutting herself up, or falling down stairs for fun, maybe the gov’t is making a good call here.
Kevin – I would generally agree with you, but the issues were 7 years ago, when she was 15, for which she underwent successful treatment.
Kevin
a fan of cutting herself up, or falling down stairs for fun
I bet she found it just as “fun” as the rape when she was 14 that led to that behavior.
Folks, this is nanny-state government, and universal healthcare, all wrapped up neatly in one single package.
“I know this is terribly old fashioned of me, but there appears to be nary a word about a father.
Perhaps if she’d bucked modern convention, and got -you know- married she wouldn’t have found herself in this situation.”
Nope. See:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/real_story/6122090.stm
or
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/30/nadopt30.xml
Among others…
John Hemming, a Birmingham MP, has been raising Early Day Motions in the Commons for years relating to social worker abuses of power. A LOT of them involve couples, even married ones.
Sorry if the links are messed up, I read this site often, but rarely comment here & I’m unfamiliar with any idiosyncracies when posting links.
The inevitable logic of “why can’t somebody do somthing about all these idiots having kids?” strikes home.
Enjoy the fruits of fussing.
Tracheotomy.
As for the father:
Think twice before you invite the government into your lives, people.
You can say that again. http://www.badcopnews.com