Next on the chopping block: the right to be fat

I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but in the UK they’re now treating families who do not toe the line on obesity treatments as child abusers:

SOCIAL workers are placing obese children on the child protection register alongside victims thought to be at risk of sexual or physical abuse.

In extreme cases children have been placed in foster care because their parents have contributed to the health problems of their offspring by failing to respond to medical advice.

The intervention of social services in what was previously regarded as a private matter is likely to raise concerns about the emergence of the “fat police”.

Nobody likes to see an obese child, and families should take that condition seriously. But is this really a matter for state intervention? Is it really worth breaking a family apart and separating a child from his or her parents because the state feels it knows best?

And as usual, I can’t see why setting these sorts of precedents wouldn’t lead to even greater intrusions 10 or 20 years from now. Today they’ll intercede in cases of extreme obesity, and 10 years from now it’ll be mild obesity. Ten years after that they’ll be pulling kids out of homes because they aren’t conforming to state-mandated nutritional standards.

The simple fact is that fat kids have been with us forever, and while their condition should be treated, that treatment should be voluntary and the result of the family’s decision on the proper approach. The state has no business interceding in this manner.

Fat kids have suffered in their childhoods throughout history, but they never had to do it without their family’s love before.