Autistic woman banned from having sex in latest Court of Protection case
This reminded me of previous LW comments about how we restrict the rights of children for their own good.
On the one hand, children can't understand the risks so we stop them having sex.
But on the other hand, animals can't understand the risks and we happily let them continue having sex.
This is a fair concern, although I don't think I'm confusing denotation and connotation in this case. I don't know for certain that British legal terminology follows American, or that a doctrine for child custody disputes and child-removal-from-home proceedings also is used for legal proceedings involving the mentally handicapped.
I think it is likely that the quote from the judge was an excerpt of a legal opinion, not from an interview. And my experience is that P(reporter quotes from legal opinion out of context) is quite high, which has some bearing on my belief that the judge explained elsewhere why he was applying the doctrine.