Every parent in England must have felt a prickle of fear this week. An appeal court ruled that, despite not having commited a crime, children could not be returned to their birth parents. That's a ruling with implications for all of us.

This is a very sad case: a couple were wrongly accused of abusing their two children. The children were removed by social services. They were subsequently adopted, but when the couple became pregnant again, they feared that this child would also wrongfully be taken from them. They went to have the child in Ireland and pursued the case in court.
To cut a long story short, and besides you can read about it yourself on http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/norfolk/7883792.stm  the case reached a court of appeal which said that while the parents "may have been subject to a miscarriage of justice", they had no right to have their children returned to them as the court order allowing the adoptions were the last word.

Probing this further, it appears that the "rights of the child" are superior to the rights of the biological parents, and the court appears to think that these chlidren's rights are best served by being left with the adoptive parents with whom they've been settled. There's a supposition that they are going to be happier and less disturbed than if they were returned to the birth parents from whom they were wrongly and cruelly forcibly removed.

Most parents who are commenting on the story on the BBC website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7889302.stm  believe that there's no reason on earth why these children should not be returned to their parents.

But what's interesting about it is the question of whether it would actually be the choice that the children would make.
I know several people that were adopted themselves and have tried to trace their birth parents. The emotional situation of adopted children can be difficult and it is entirely possible that they are having a better life in general terms than their parents could have provided them with.
But often the situation is wrapped up with a background of abuse, with feelings of rejection, of wondering why someone that brought them into this world let them go.

But I think this situation is completely different.
There doesn't appear to have been a set of horrific circumstances from which these children were being rescued.
As far as we know, these children were not actually being abused, they were suffering from a rare genetic condition that led to easy bruising.
I myself bruise easily - there's a nice purple one coming up on my calf at the moment courtesy of a careless moment trying to squeeze past the kitchen cupboard without moving my son out the way and misjudging where the cupboard handle was by a fraction of a centimetre.
But while I appreciate its important to protect the vulnerable and look out for the warning signs, sometimes "I walked into the cupboard door" is actually what happened.
From the child's point of view, someone seems to have come, removed them from mummy and daddy, told them that they never have to see them again, put them with foster parents and then put them through a formal adoption process.
I wonder whether at any point the children asked whether they could see mummy and daddy. If so, I wonder what they were told?
But would the child the parents would get back be able to trust their parents again - not because of abuse but because of the fear that ultimately their parents could not protect them from being legally taken away?

Don't get me wrong, I know that social workers have a terribly difficult job to do and have been on the receiving end of terrible, abusive press coverage in the wake of the Baby P case (some deserved for individuals, but the demonisation of the entire profession is totally unwarranted). But the idea that social workers can remove children from their parents and even when its proven that they got it wrong, the children still don't get to go home... as a parent it's just unthinkable.
It's as if the court has decided that the act of adoption is regarded as being the final purchase of a child, and that it defines the child's rightful owner. It has been pointed out that if the child were a piece of property, like a house, it would have course have been returned to the original owner. But the decision is different when we're looking at a child because the court decision needs to act in the child's best interests.
But it seems to me that it's not right that the adoption order is the final say in this case. The children were not the state's to take in the first place. Were they?

There is not going to be a happy outcome in this case.
Either the parents or the adoptive parents are going to be hurt beyond comprehension.
The children are going to feel insecure and to have had the most important relationships of their early lives tested so hard that how will they ever learn to trust? And how willl they ever grow to be full citizens that can support a state that interferes in their lives so unhelpfully and so painfully?
But surely more imaginative solutions are available. these days, it's quite normal for a child that's been adopted to be allowed some contact with their birth family - a letter once a year, a chance to meet up occasionally. If this can be done in "normal" adoption situations, surely it could be used as a vehicle to reintegrate the birth parents into the children's lives in this case?

Others have looked at ways to keep the children where they are but compensate the parents somehow. However, the suggestion that the parents could perhaps be offered financial compensation for the inconvenience that they have suffered is surely hugely insulting.
I realise that it's for the inconvenience and not the loss of their children, but even so the idea that money takes away the pain that this couple have been caused is to misunderstand what it means to have brought into the world and then have them snatched away by people that you'd always thought were there to protect those that need it, not come into ordinary lives as a malevolent force breaking up a family with no reason. 

And as a parent living in the UK, I find this case really scary.
This case basically implies that if accused wrongfully of harming my son, he could be removed from me, and even if I took it to court and won I may still never have him back in my life again. This is a person created in love by my husband and I, whom we love more than anyone else in the whole world and would do anything to protect.

And yet this ruling means that the state has more say over what happens to the relationship between me and my child than I'd ever imagined possible.

I was already feeling policed (the Red Book of early childhood issues and vaccination records, the sheer volume of paperwork involved in his life at nursery etc.) but now I know that just having given birth to him does not make him mine.

I know that in the long term a parent-child relationship is something that has to be developed, worked at, and ultimately it is a process of loss and separation for the parent and growth and self-discovery for the child.
The child ultimately belongs to his or herself.  But I had always thought that, unless a crime was being committed, the pace of that process was a journey that my child and I were free to take at our own pace.
But the question I guess I'm now asking is... given this ruling, does your child actually belong to you?