Civitas

Let us set aside for the moment the question whether AID should be a procedure legally available to women outside of a conventional marriage that would supply any children conceived that way with a ‘father’ as well as with a mother.

In what possible way can the welfare of the two girls be thought to be served by their being forced to maintain association with their other's former female lover against the express wish of their mother and after she broken up with that women when her children were aged 3 and 1 respectively?

It is only plausible to suppose their welfare would be imperilled by their discontinuing contact with their mother's former lover had the relation between her and their mother been so much more protracted as would have caused them to develop towards their mother’s former lover a much closer bond than could possibly have arisen in the relatively brief time during which she lived with them.

To suggest otherwise would, by parity of reasoning, entitle nannies, should they wish them, who often enjoy much closer contact with their very young charges than do either natural parent, to contact rights over their former charges in the name of their welfare.

The judge is reported to have said that the two girls would ‘benefit from allowing shared parental responsibility between the former partners’. This is despite their mother, to whom he was happy to grant sole residency, not wishing this responsibility so shared.

To the judge's claim, I wish to respond by saying: ‘Balderdash!’

The only understanding his Lordship has given the girls of their earlier lives and only clear picture of where they fit in is that they have been the exclusive playthings of women and made to serve as sacrificial lambs on the altar of political correctness. Moreover, with the full approval of a male judge, they have been been made into piggies-in-middle of a shameful tug of war between two estranged former lovers of whom one happens to be their natural mother.

This is not a salutary lesson for any girls who would otherwise, as a matter of sheer statistical probability, almost certainly be likely to grow up with normal heterosexual proclivities.

What damage is the judge's decision likely to have done to the formation within them of a normal female wish to become mothers one day in the normal way?

So little consideration to the welfare of the girls can any of the parties involved in the decision be thought to have displayed that the judge's decision might well be thought as likely to facilitate the development in them of normal healthy sexual proclivities as would have been likely had he ordered instead that they be sent forthwith to a nunnery!