There have been stories in the news recently about adoptive parents being turned down for adoption because of their weight.

It seems to be that obesity is coming under the classification of ‘ill health’ as the reason for refusal.

This is a very worrying trend.

While nobody is pretending that obesity, particularly morbid obesity, is ‘healthy’ - how fat is too fat to adopt?

As far as I can find out, there are no specific guidelines laid out for when obesity becomes a reason to refuse the adoption. The decisions seem to be purely on the personal opinions of the judges in these cases.

If obesity is going to be a criteria for adoption, then new guidelines need to be drawn up by doctors, health professionals and the judiciary. The decisions cannot be left to the whim of a judge. 

The adoptive parents need to know the criteria from the beginning of the adoption process, not go through three years of red tape and heartache just to be turned down at the final hurdle.

Plus where does this trend on the ‘health’ front end? Will having a glass of wine when you go out for dinner come under the classification of ‘regular drinker/alcoholic’

What about smoking?

Where will judges individual decisions end?

adoption

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 at 6:23 pm and is filed under Adoption. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.