As some of you know, Mr. She isn’t very well, and he suffers from numerous comorbidities (one of the terms of 2020, along with “social distancing” and “an abundance of caution” that I’ll be glad to see the back of, hopefully soon) that make him especially vulnerable to infection and which have made it difficult to get him and our healthcare providers in the same room at the same time for the past few months. Nevertheless, I’m confident that our doctor, who I’ve known for 30 years as my doctor, as my co-worker in his role as the IT champion for his Family Medicine department, and as my friend, is on top of things.

As things have slowly started to ease up in PA, Mr. She’s declining health, in both the mental and physical senses, recently led our PCP to engage the services of the local visiting nurse agency, and for the next few weeks, we’re enjoying an onslaught (in the best possible sense) of nurses, PT and OT therapists, and personal care aides. It’s wonderful in that it takes some of the pressure off me to be the sole provider of such care, and it’s reassuring to have other “eyes on” the patient besides my own. I’m also viewing it as an instructional tool, as I’m learning some caring techniques myself. (Please consider such forms of help, if you’re caring for a loved one yourself. I wish I’d followed the good advice that some of you gave me in this regard, but I’m glad I’m finally coming to terms with the idea now.)

Theologians and philosophers deal in the world of perfection, the ideal – capital “T” Truth. My degree is in Mechanical Engineering; I deal in the world of close enough – small “t” truths.

Tens of thousands of years ago, a great scientist observed that the sun rose in the east every morning and set in the west every night and concluded that the sun rotates around the Earth. And that was close enough to allow us to do some good stuff like navigating around our world.

I am an attorney. My largest area of practice is in the representation of youth in dependency cases. These cases are governed by statutory law, and, in general, the statutes do a pretty decent job of protecting the rights of parents. We may often hear about cases where some form of child abuse or neglect has occurred, and as thoughtful human beings, we tend to respond with a sort of knee-jerk anger directed at parents. We condemn what is often despicable behavior, and we are eager to see children removed and placed in better situations.

But consider what we’re doing when we choose to allow state intervention. It seems fairly uncontroversial to say that children ought to be kept safe, and that the state has an interest in keeping them safe, no? Well, I guess that all depends on your understanding of safety. It depends on the confidence we have in people who would make determinations of safety, and the myriad considerations that go into what really is a complex analysis. Consider that our government is taking legal steps to interfere with the construction of families, and think about what rights and what burdens of proof you might require of any government that wished to interfere with the construction of your family. Not all cases are simple. In fact, virtually none of them are. And, as with everything, our actions carry costs. Are the consequences of removal worth the benefits of some harm being mitigated? What if the cure is worse than the disease?