A woman’s baby was put into foster care because she wasn’t considered intelligent or competent enough to look after her premature baby. Three years later, the baby is now well enough to be looked after by any normal person, and so she wants the child back. The local council is fighting to stop her, so the woman is going to the European Human Rights court.

In all this there’s people who’ve been forgotten. Possibly. You see, we don’t know if the foster parents and the would-be adoptive parents are, in fact, the same people.

Let’s, for the sake of hypothetical argument, twist this argument around. The foster parents are the people that nursed this baby to the good health she enjoys now. They took on a seriously ill baby with special needs, cared for it, loved it, and now, three years later they want to do the most natural thing in the world – adopt this child. They have a bond, a relationship. For the little girl, her parents are her parents. From their point of view, the biological mother, now that the baby is well and ‘normal’, suddenly wants the child back, and they’re in the mood to fight to stop this happening. They love this child.

Of course it seems harsh for anyone to have their child taken away from them because they’ve got an IQ of 70 – I do not believe for a second this was done lightly. But this is the problem with this sort of decision. As unfair as it seems for the mother, it is crueller and more unjust still for the child. Children need stability, and to take her away from whom she considers to be her loving parents is not something that should be done lightly, or in fact ever without good cause.

In other words, when you actually start considering the child’s needs first this issue isn’t quite as clear cut as an odious council abusing their power bullying a thicko.

The idea that you can dump a sick child on the state for a couple of years then come back when it’s well again isn’t something we should ever tolerate or encourage, and that’s what I’m afraid of here.